To shift a domestic La Liga match away from Spain for the first time, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid are engaged in ground-breaking negotiations.
The planned location for the Spanish league match is Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium in the United States. Currently, Barcelona’s matchup with Atletico Madrid is set for the weekend of December 22 at Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium.
Barcelona is the most indebted football team in the world, and they are now renovating their Camp Nou stadium. In the meantime, Atletico Madrid recently reached the largest business agreement in the team’s history by giving stadium naming rights to Riyadh Air, a PIF-owned business and the team’s primary sponsor.
According to Mail Online, the fixture change will be subject to FIFA, UEFA and Spanish FA approval. The Spanish FA have previously opposed La Liga’s plans to play fixtures in the United States during Luis Rubiales’ spell as president.
However, La Liga is hopeful that now that Rubiales has resigned, the Spanish FA will be more receptive to the concept.
The possibility of playing games in the US has been openly addressed by La Liga president Javier Tebas. “It’s a mark of respect to the US fans [of La Liga],” he stated last summer. The NFL and NBA are currently playing in Mexico and Europe. The American market would respond favourably to this.
Spanish football has been the most open to playing matches abroad out of any major European country. Supercopa de España has taken place on foreign shores in five of the last six seasons. Four of those games have been held in Saudi Arabia while the 2018 match took place in Morocco.
FIFA’s regulations, which mandate that official league matches must take place within the borders of their respective member associations, reject the idea of playing competitive domestic matches overseas, despite the Spanish FA’s possible acceptance of the proposal.
Although La Liga will advocate for the game to proceed, more work needs to be done before the pre-Christmas encounter is authorised.
Given the pressure on clubs to optimise their commercial revenue, if it is approved, it might lead to a potentially problematic trend. The Premier League’s rules in England put teams in a difficult position since they restrict their capacity to make commercial revenue through Associated Party Transactions and subtract points from clubs who don’t make enough money relative to their expenditures.
Despite the possible financial advantages, it is believed that the Football Association and Premier League are against the concept of holding domestic games overseas.
The Premier League Summer Series, which is held across the United States, has been created as a more agreeable substitute. In a modest league structure, a few of Premier League clubs compete in the preseason event.
After a 2024 break, the Premier League year Series will resume next year. In 2023, Newcastle participated in the first Summer Series and came in third place, behind winners Chelsea and Aston Villa.
The average attendance for the nine games was 46,916; the largest crowd, 70,789, for Newcastle’s 1-1 draw with Chelsea at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
That ought to be the upper limit for English fixtures abroad for the time being. But if FIFA accepts La Liga’s proposals
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