Barcelona tops pile of La Liga TV earners

La Liga has revealed how much money each team from the top two tiers of Spanish football received for the 2018/19 season. 

Unsurprisingly, league winners and Champions League semi-finalists Barcelona sit atop the list with TV earnings of €165.5 million, while Real Madrid are in second with €155.3 million. Athletico Madrid in third with €119.2 million is the only other club to receive more than €100 million in TV earnings from the domestic league. 

Sevilla and Valencia with respective TV earnings of €80.1 million and €78.7 million round out the top five. 

At the bottom of the pile in the top flight of Spanish football are Leganés, Rayo and Huesca with €47.6 million, €47.4 million, €44.2 million respectively. 

While the gap between first and last is over €100 million, there is actually less distance between the top and the bottom than ever before. Following a Royal Decree in 2015, the gap has been reduced by two thirds. In the 2014-15 season, the gap between top and bottom was nine times, but that was only 3.5 times for the 2018-19 season.

LaLiga SmartBank – the country’s second division – saw TV incomes ranging from €30 million, down to €5.6 million. Overall total TV income for La Liga clubs was €1.42 billion, with clubs in the second division netting a total of €206 million.

The figures for the Spanish top division stand in stark contrast to the English Premier League, widely considered to be the most lucrative professional football league in the world. While Barcelona’s €165.5 million income is comparable to Liverpool’s £152.4 million (€178 million), the gap in the EPL is much smaller. Huddersfield – the league’s lowest earners – with £96.7 million (€113 million) in league TV income earned over double that of Huesca, and received a larger amount than 17 La Liga clubs.

In total, EPL clubs received £2.46 billion (€2.87 billion) in TV income for 2018-19, more than double that of La Liga.