NTV Online: Social media giant Facebook has bagged the media rights of Spain’s top-division football championship, La Liga, for the Indian subcontinent, both parties have confirmed the path-breaking deal. With this mega deal, La Liga will be the first European football league to be broadcast exclusively live on Facebook in the Indian subcontinent. La Liga will be available for free on Facebook in India, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, championship’s India Country Manager Jose Cachaza revealed to IANS on Monday.
The period of the deal is for three seasons and it begins with the 2018-19 campaign starting on August 17, Peter Hutton, Facebook Head of Global Live Sports Programming, said.
‘La Liga has a very wide global audience and the league has two of the most supported clubs on our platform — Real Madrid and Barcelona. Fans can either go to La Liga page on Facebook and can view any of the matches or they can go on to the Facebook page of their favourite clubs to watch the match. No subscriptions are needed,’ he said.
‘We are delighted to have the opportunity to expand La Liga’s fan base in India with free live streaming of football games. Apart from the live games, the fans will also have access to see other programmes like studio discussion, preview shows and highlights,’ Hutton said, adding that interacting with fellow fans is a very interesting feature that Facebook will offer during the live streaming.
Earlier, the La Liga media rights for the Indian subcontinent was with Sony Pictures Networks India. According to sources, Sony Pictures Networks was not ready to match the figure offered by Facebook.
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