Digital is deprived of many heads of poster

José Luis Astiazaran, the discreet President of la Liga professional football, neither Florentino Perez or Joan Laporta, the powerful patterns of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona can boast of such a power! In the Iberian Peninsula, the strong man of football is called Jaume Roures. Sunday, when the first act of the "clasico", true Summit of the Spain Championship, it imagined, his group, which will be the joysticks. Owner of television of the Real and Barcelona as well as 36 others of 42 first and second division clubs, it is he who will ensure the retransmission of the meeting to millions of télé-spectateurs, in the country and abroad. In the same house Camp Nou, fetish stage of Barcelona team, it is also he who sells the billboards and fills the VIP loges on behalf of several of its major clients (Santander, Mahou, etc.).

Unknown to the general public, Jaume Roures, fifty years, is everywhere. Non-repenter Trotskyite, catalan nationalist posted, this former sport TV3 journalist, the regional public television of Catalonia, has built an empire. Its ramifications ranging from the production of content (TV and film) with football and Woody Allen at the top of gondola, to the television via the Sexta by newspaper with newspaper "Publico". Human initiates in the management of sports rights in 1991 in Dorna, a firm specializing, before creating Mediapro three years after with two partners. Home is gaining ground to Audiovisual Sport (AVS), the joint-venture controlled mostly by Sogecable (Digital ), then owner of all of the Spanish soccer clubs TV rights. Guests, in 2006, at the round table of AVS, Jaume Roures and his friends to see expelled the following year by the Sogecable Group Prisa ("El Pais"), the majority shareholder.

Already 1 million subscribers

Timing error! MediaPro, which has invested more than 2 billion euros, in the meantime signed with all football clubs. Digital is deprived of many heads of poster. This is war! But the wind has turned in recent years against Prisa.

Came to power in 2004, the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is a counterweight to this group of omnipotent press left. Since then, Jaume Roures benefits. Associated with the Mexican Televisa (40) and Spanish venture capital firm Gala Capital (9), he was granted a licence in 2005, to create a TV channel. La Sexta began in March 2006. "We have political affinities with Zapatero, but the truth is that we were the only ones to EUR 530 million on the table", said Gerard Romy, one of the founders of Mediapro. "We also accused of being behind the recent Government go-ahead to the creation of pay-TV channels on digital television terrestrial (DTT), but the Spain is two years behind in this area with other countries," adds the right arm of Roures.

Become Imagina after its merger with the TV Globomedia producer, the group immediately launched on DTT, this fall, GolTv, its chain specialized broadcast previously by cable operators (Euskaltel, Telecable and ONO) and operators of mobile telephony (Orange, Jazztel, Imagenio). Offering 265 games of foot per month including live 82, for a monthly subscription of 14,90 euros, the small new already has 1 million subscribers - including 27,000 bars-a ended the monopoly of Canal Liga, to great anger of Prisa, which brought an appeal against DTT pay and sensitized the Council of competition on the situation of Imagina television and football. What does not appear to worry stakeholders, who provide offer everyone the same conditions as to GolTV or la Sexta. Sunday, Jaume Roures would be not neutral so far. Friend of Laporta and Johan Cruyff, is an irreducible supporter of Barcelona.