La Liga's Tebas takes feud with PSG boss to court

PARIS - For months, it seemed, the feud between the leader of Spain's top football league and the president of Qatar-owned French team Paris Saint-Germain has played out noisily and in public.

Javier Tebas, the outspoken president of La Liga, would regularly criticise PSG and their Qatari leaders, accusing them of flagrantly breaking European football's financial rules. And occasionally, the PSG president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, would respond to Tebas with his own accusations, questioning the health of Spanish football, or trade barbs with him in the news media and in speeches.

The more high-stakes fight, it turns out, was taking place behind the scenes.

This week, after almost two months of wrangling, Tebas and La Liga secured a court order to freeze tens of millions of dollars of the assets of beIN Media Group, the Qatar-owned broadcast network headed by al-Khelaifi, in a dispute over unpaid broadcast-rights payments.

BeIN, one of the most prolific spenders on broadcast rights in the world, owns the rights to La Liga matches in swaths of Asia and the Middle East as well as some key European markets. But according to a court document seen by The New York Times, it had failed to pay more than €50 million euros (S$69.7 million) it owed the Spanish league for this season's games.

In the 11-page order, the court said it had frozen the assets because of the risk that the funds would be repatriated to Qatar.

A beIN spokesperson said €10 million of the debt had been repaid on Oct 5. But the company said it would not discuss its private, contractual discussions with La Liga or any rights holder, adding: "That is not how business should be conducted, certainly not by professional and dignified institutions."

The outstanding debt represents only a fraction of the money beIN Media Group has paid over the years to La Liga, with industry estimates suggesting the total amount contracted to be as much as US$1.5 billion (S$2.15 billion) since 2018.

Delays in payments to sports organisations are not uncommon, with broadcasters often known to negotiate payment plans with their partners. What is uncommon is the lengths La Liga has gone to ensure it receives the money it says it is owed. BeIN continues to broadcast La Liga games across its networks.

The case is certain to bring renewed focus on Qatar's influence in football, which in addition to hosting Nov 20-Dec 18 World Cup also plays a leading role in European football through its free-spending ownership of PSG, the dominant force in France, and beIN, which has paid billions to acquire the broadcast rights to some of football's top competitions.

But it also will shine a spotlight on the influence of al-Khelaifi, whose simultaneous roles as the chairman of PSG and beIN Media Group and as a board member of European football's governing body, Uefa, have made him one of the most influential figures in the sport.

Al-Khelaifi has for years emphatically denied the accusation that he wields too much power given his various roles; he has said that in the past, he sought legal advice whenever such conflicts have arisen and that he regularly recuses himself from meetings in which his various roles could clash.

Tebas told the Times that beIN has been delaying payments since 2021, and he rejected the network's claim that it was facing financial challenges. Instead, he suggested, the broadcaster is attempting to renegotiate its deals with La Liga, which cover territories stretching from France to the Middle East and Asia to New Zealand.

But Tebas also suggested there was another motive for the missed payments: He said they were an effort to pressure him to relent in his criticisms of al-Khelaifi. In June, for example, Tebas filed a complaint with Uefa in which he accused PSG and Manchester City, another team backed by a Gulf state, of being in "continuous breach" of financial regulations.

"He knows exactly what he is doing," Tebas said of al-Khelaifi. "He's trying to get to the point where clubs will tell the president of the league we prefer to get the money and have you talk less."

BeIN made its disdain for Tebas clear in its response. "If we ran our operations reacting to certain executive's comments on others within the sports industry, we wouldn't be in business," the company said.

Much of Tebas' fury about PSG and al-Khelaifi stems from the French club's ability to lure star players from La Liga, spending that he contends has unfairly altered the game's economics. In 2017, PSG broke the world transfer record when it paid €222 million, at the time more than double the highest amount previously paid for a player, to acquire Brazilian star Neymar from Barcelona.

It also managed to lure Lionel Messi to Paris in 2021 after Barcelona could not afford to renew his contract. Earlier this year, PSG paid French star Kylian Mbappe a signing-on fee of more than US$100 million to reject Real Madrid's overtures.

While other leagues and executives have privately expressed concerns about the spending by state-owned teams, Tebas has been by far the most outspoken. Calling them "cowards", Tebas said "football executives always want to make sure they have good relations and eat well instead of stepping outside their comfort zone".

For Uefa, the running dispute between two of its most prominent voices is proving to be awkward because both are members of its executive board. The latest court fight will do little to lower the temperature, and it is not over.

The ruling freezing beIN's assets, according to the document, is only a temporary measure; the court will hold a full hearing on the merits of the case, but the timetable is unclear.

NYTIMES