It's Not Just A Store It's La Liga
LaLiga, the organising body of the top two divisions of Spanish club football, has announced an agreement with Amazon that allows fans from outside Spain to purchase merchandise and products from clubs directly through the e-commerce giant.
The pact initially covers 13 clubs and four overseas markets – the UK, Italy, France and Germany. A dedicated LaLiga store is now available on Amazon.uk, Amazon.it, Amazon.fr and Amazon.de.
The following LaLiga clubs are currently participating in the project: Getafe, Cádiz, Granada, Athletic Club, Levante, Villareal, Real Sociedad, Deportivo Alavés, Espanyol, Mallorca, RC Celta de Vigo, Real Betis Balompié and Osasuna.
LaLiga executive director, Óscar Mayo, said: “For LaLiga, it’s very important to offer LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank clubs all possible tools in order to bring our league closer to our fans around the world. Through this exciting collaboration with Amazon, we are continuing to develop our internationalisation strategy and we can boost the growth of the competition and its clubs.
“For now, we have 13 LaLiga Santander clubs participating in this project, with the LaLiga store to launch from December 29 in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany. Our goal is to bring more LaLiga clubs on board and to be present in more regions around the world, with these to be announced during the first quarter of 2022.”
LaLiga claims the deal makes it the first football league to establish a store on Amazon. In February, the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) teamed up with Amazon to launch a new official online store. The ‘Official Team Store’ made national-team branded products available to fans in every global market reached by Amazon.
Hernando Moncaleano, head of Fans 360 at Amazon, said: “I am thrilled about launching this multi-year collaboration with LaLiga, bringing official products and tailored shopping experience to thousands of LaLiga fans so they can celebrate and share their love for Spanish football.”
In January 2020, Javier Tebas, the president of LaLiga, underlined the need for Amazon and other major streaming platforms to provide consumer data details as part of any rights agreement.
Following on from Amazon’s acquisition of a package of domestic English Premier League rights (from 2019-20 to 2020-21) and a slice of Uefa Champions League rights in Germany (from 2021-22 to 2023-24), Tebas expressed LaLiga’s willingness to sell rights to the platform.
However, any such deal should not be “under any conditions” according to Tebas.
In the event, LaLiga recently generated a one-per-cent increase in the value of its domestic pay-television broadcast rights in five-season deals with incumbent rights-holder Telefónica, the leading Spanish telecoms operator, and OTT subscription broadcaster DAZN. The deals will bring in €4.95bn ($5.6bn) – an average of €990m per year – from 2022-23 to 2026-27.
