BARCELONA, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Barcelona and Real Madrid
threatened new legal action should a plan by the country's top
soccer league to accept a cash injection from private equity
fund CVC move forward, saying on Tuesday it was both illegal and
too costly.
Spain's two largest soccer clubs together with Athletic
Bilbao - which are all owned by their members instead of by
corporates - accused LaLiga's administrator of exceeding the
organisation's legal authority and acting coercively.
"The clubs are sovereign members of LaLiga, not prisoners of
its managers," they said in an open letter.
"All these issues are so serious that they oblige the clubs
to take the necessary legal steps to protect their legitimate
interests," they added, after listing several aspects of the CVC
arrangement, such as those related to the clubs' audiovisual
rights, they said were illegal.
The three clubs took legal action in September to challenge
LaLiga's CVC deal.
The deal is, however, due to receive final approval on Dec.
10 and has been backed by 38 of the 42 clubs comprising LaLiga
in a first round of voting. It would see the fund receive 11% of
the league's television rights over the next 50 years in
exchange for a one-off payment of 2.7 billion euros ($3.04
billion).
Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bilbao reject the deal and have
advanced an alternative proposal which would see JPMorgan
, Bank of America and HSBC jointly lend
2 billion euros in exchange for a fixed annual payment of 115
million euros for 25 years, a document seen by Reuters last week
showed.
The three say their proposal would cost Spanish clubs around
900 million euros and clubs would retain control of their
audiovisual rights. They say the CVC deal would have a price tag
of 13.1 billion euros.
LaLiga president Javier Tebas has strongly criticised the
alternative proposal.
($1 = 0.8896 euros)
(Reporting by Joan Faus, editing by Aislinn Laing and Ed
Osmond)