Sensationalist Television Coverage
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There is about the same amount of football shown on free-to-air television here as there is back home. This initially came as a surprise to me. After all, Spain is a football mad country.
Each weekend, on free-to-air television, you can look forward to watching one live match a week. It's always the match at ten o'clock on Saturday night and, more often than not, it will feature one of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético de Madrid, Sevilla or Valencia. Since I‘ve been here, there hasn't been a match on at ten which hasn't involved one of those six. It's understandable considering they're the top sides at the moment.
This is exactly what we have in Ireland. We can expect to see one game a week on RTÉ2 or TG4, but the exception to Spain is it won’t always be the top teams. Sometimes, it will be a derby or a relegation battle. That’s not the case here.
Last week, I wouldn't have expected to see Málaga playing Xerez on Spanish national television, even though it was a derby in the country’s most populous province, Andalucia. It was also a relegation battle, with Xerez winning 4-2 in Málaga. The demand here is always to see the big teams. In contrast, on Sunday RTÉ screened the Louth derby - two teams that aren't expected to be challenging for title.
When the European competitions are on, one match a night is shown. It’ll always be the ones with Spanish teams playing or, if no Spanish team is playing, a team with Spanish players or one big Spanish player (i.e. Cesc Fabregas at Arsenal). For the Europa League, the nine o’clock match is always shown.
Of course, all of this is only on free-to-air channels. There is plenty of football to be seen on cable channels, like Gol TV or Canal+. These channels give wall-to-wall coverage of every match over the course of the weekend.
Unlike Ireland, Spanish games are normally played on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with the odd midweek fixtures thrown in during the season. In recent years, matches have been moved around the weekend to accommodate television interests.
Nowadays, there are three matches on a Saturday: the first is at 6pm, the next at 8pm and the third at 10pm. On a Sunday, the remaining seven games are played: five at 5pm, one at 7pm and another at 9pm.
As I mentioned last week, last month, the Liga Profesional de Fútbol (LFP) decided to move matches away from Saturdays and Sundays for more television coverage. Now, a game from the second tier can be seen on a Friday night and one from the top tier can be seen on a Monday night. These matches are all shown on cable channels. This move has annoyed some fans but while most Spaniards disapprove, a lot of them won’t get overly worked up about it.
Televised matches here are shown in a bizarre format too. Due to the high amount of advertising on Spanish television, and in Spanish society in general, there is effectively no room for a half-time analysis piece. Instead, there are ten minutes of ads, followed by replays of some incidents from the first half.
These replays, like all replays during the game, are also sponsored by various different brands. After the two or three minutes of replays, there is a continuation of several more minutes of ads before the channel returns to the stadium for the start of the second half.
The post match interviews are shown in the sports section of the news programmes and the cynic in me can’t help but notice that beside each microphone are three bottles of the companies sponsoring the game (Coca-Cola, Mahou, a Spanish beer, and a bottled water company).
The commentators, presenters and reporters are all a sensationalist bunch. Every game is introduced as being from “the best league in the world” and television, like all sports media in Spain, blows everything out of proportion.
Every weekend is described as if it will define the season. For instance, this weekend, all the talk was about Barça recovering after a 2-2 draw last week in Almería and how Real will win the title if they don‘t.
They played Valencia at the Camp Nou and won comfortably thanks to a Lionel Messi hat-trick. After the game, the sports presenter on the news was insisting that Real Madrid needed to win big against Real Valladolid to get back into the title race.
Real won and are now top on goal difference but the there are still 12 games to go in the season, including the second El Clásico in the Santiago Bernabeú on 11 April. The title was never going to be decided on Sunday night, despite what the television presenters would have you believe.
Each weekend, on free-to-air television, you can look forward to watching one live match a week. It's always the match at ten o'clock on Saturday night and, more often than not, it will feature one of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético de Madrid, Sevilla or Valencia. Since I‘ve been here, there hasn't been a match on at ten which hasn't involved one of those six. It's understandable considering they're the top sides at the moment.
This is exactly what we have in Ireland. We can expect to see one game a week on RTÉ2 or TG4, but the exception to Spain is it won’t always be the top teams. Sometimes, it will be a derby or a relegation battle. That’s not the case here.
Last week, I wouldn't have expected to see Málaga playing Xerez on Spanish national television, even though it was a derby in the country’s most populous province, Andalucia. It was also a relegation battle, with Xerez winning 4-2 in Málaga. The demand here is always to see the big teams. In contrast, on Sunday RTÉ screened the Louth derby - two teams that aren't expected to be challenging for title.
When the European competitions are on, one match a night is shown. It’ll always be the ones with Spanish teams playing or, if no Spanish team is playing, a team with Spanish players or one big Spanish player (i.e. Cesc Fabregas at Arsenal). For the Europa League, the nine o’clock match is always shown.
Of course, all of this is only on free-to-air channels. There is plenty of football to be seen on cable channels, like Gol TV or Canal+. These channels give wall-to-wall coverage of every match over the course of the weekend.
Unlike Ireland, Spanish games are normally played on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with the odd midweek fixtures thrown in during the season. In recent years, matches have been moved around the weekend to accommodate television interests.
Nowadays, there are three matches on a Saturday: the first is at 6pm, the next at 8pm and the third at 10pm. On a Sunday, the remaining seven games are played: five at 5pm, one at 7pm and another at 9pm.
As I mentioned last week, last month, the Liga Profesional de Fútbol (LFP) decided to move matches away from Saturdays and Sundays for more television coverage. Now, a game from the second tier can be seen on a Friday night and one from the top tier can be seen on a Monday night. These matches are all shown on cable channels. This move has annoyed some fans but while most Spaniards disapprove, a lot of them won’t get overly worked up about it.
Televised matches here are shown in a bizarre format too. Due to the high amount of advertising on Spanish television, and in Spanish society in general, there is effectively no room for a half-time analysis piece. Instead, there are ten minutes of ads, followed by replays of some incidents from the first half.
These replays, like all replays during the game, are also sponsored by various different brands. After the two or three minutes of replays, there is a continuation of several more minutes of ads before the channel returns to the stadium for the start of the second half.
The post match interviews are shown in the sports section of the news programmes and the cynic in me can’t help but notice that beside each microphone are three bottles of the companies sponsoring the game (Coca-Cola, Mahou, a Spanish beer, and a bottled water company).
The commentators, presenters and reporters are all a sensationalist bunch. Every game is introduced as being from “the best league in the world” and television, like all sports media in Spain, blows everything out of proportion.
Every weekend is described as if it will define the season. For instance, this weekend, all the talk was about Barça recovering after a 2-2 draw last week in Almería and how Real will win the title if they don‘t.
They played Valencia at the Camp Nou and won comfortably thanks to a Lionel Messi hat-trick. After the game, the sports presenter on the news was insisting that Real Madrid needed to win big against Real Valladolid to get back into the title race.
Real won and are now top on goal difference but the there are still 12 games to go in the season, including the second El Clásico in the Santiago Bernabeú on 11 April. The title was never going to be decided on Sunday night, despite what the television presenters would have you believe.
About Finbarr O'Sullivan
Currently working in Brazil, Finbarr will be giving his take on Brazilian football in his regular Extratime.ie column. Finbarr peviously studied in Spain and worked in the Czech Republic and had regular column pieces on … View Full Profile