Jorge Vergara, the owner of the Guadalajara Chivas, Mexico’s most popular soccer team, has ended a 22-year relationship with the nation’s largest broadcaster and announced that he will be creating his own television channel to show his team’s live games and offer other club-related content.
The Televisa network has been paying Vergara $US25 million a year for the rights to show Chivas’ games exclusively on their subscription network Sky.
Vergara did not provide much detail on exactly how Chivas TV would operate but suggested it would be a subscription-based model similar to those used by top European club teams, such as Manchester United (MUTV), Bayern Munich and Barcelona.
For example, MUTV offers Manchester United fans exclusive interviews with players and staff, live senior team and academy games, interviews, “classic” games from yesteryear, plus round-the-clock soccer news and other themed programming.
Options include providing Chivas TV on a variety of platforms, including the Internet, smart TVs and cellphones. Vergara may also follow a route taken by the National Football League (NFL) to broadcast games at movie theaters throughout the country.
“What I can guarantee is that fans will be able to see the Chivas in a very different and unique form, one that has not been seen in Mexico before,” Vergara told reporters.
Analysts expect Vergara to sell his signal of live games to other cable or satellite operators in Mexico and abroad. It is not clear, however, whether such agreements will be in place before the start of the next Liga Mx season (Aperture 2016), which begins in August.
Most representatives of other teams in the Liga Mx welcomed Vergara’s move. Andres Fassi, vice president of Pachuca, said called it the first step to “ending the broadcasting duopoly” in Mexican soccer – held by Televisa and TV Azteca.