Although Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo left their respective La Liga clubs, the league’s president of India claims that viewership has climbed steadily ever since their departures.
Even when Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, two of the most well-known football players in the world, left La Liga, the league’s overall viewership remained unaffected. In fact, Jose Cachaza, managing director of La Liga India, claims that clubs themselves are the only constant element in the game, making players joining and departing them a reality that league officials must accept.
When asked if the departure of the two celebrities had a negative effect on the number of viewers in the nation, he answered categorically, “No.” Because of this, Cachaza said to HindustanTimes.com, “our viewership numbers have continued to rise, our social media following has increased, and so have our sponsorships. That is the essence of the game; players don’t last forever, teams do.”
The Spanish player claims that while the league usually prefers to have star players play in their nation, it is not overly concerned if, for example, Real Madrid is unable to sign Kylian Mbappe or Erling Haaland. On the other hand, it is still true that Real, Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid continue to have top-drawer players among their ranks.
“Of course, we want to have the best players. We want to have Haaland and Mbappe in La Liga. Maybe one day they will come. But for example, we have two of the best strikers in the world playing for Real Madrid (Karim Benzema) and Barcelona (Robert Lewandowski). We have some of the most promising young players playing for Madrid, Barcelona, and Atletico like Vinicius, Ansu Fati, Rodrygo, and Joao.
In addition, Cachaza stated that the league was pleased with Viacom18’s purchase of the digital rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL), a move he believes will increase interest in the league’s OTT platform Voot. This season, La Liga is being broadcast on the Sports18 channel of Viacom18.
We want to maintain expanding our advertising reach in the nation, therefore we are in the second year of our partnership with our broadcaster Viacom18. Last year, we were only on MTV, but this year, we are expanding with them on their new channel Sports18, and the OTT booklet.
We cannot forget the cricket asset Viacom18 has recently acquired and, at the end of the day, that will be good for us because the general audience of the channel will be bigger so our audience will be bigger too. Product-wise this season could be a little more competitive than the last so that will be good for the fans and increase the audience.
La Liga was one of several sports organizations that moved out as part of the social media behemoth’s gradual transition away from the field. La Liga has experimentally tested out streaming matches exclusively on Facebook in India.
“Facebook was a pretty good experience. It helped us learn a lot about our audience because there is a lot of instant data that we are getting from Facebook. It helped us reach new fans. Now we are in a different situation, where we are in a channel and in an OTT platform. Facebook decided not to continue with live sports of any kind, which is why we would have never said no to them,” said Cachaza.
