Less than two months before the IOC General Assembly, the battle for the 2020 Games seems more uncertain than ever. The only certainty: Madrid's candidacy, long considered out of the running due to the economic crisis Spain is going through, has regained color. The report of the evaluation commission suggests that the poor figures of the country's economy were not likely to undermine the Madrid file, estimating that the truth of the moment would undoubtedly no longer be the same seven years later.
However, Spanish sport is currently on the edge of the precipice, like its flagship, La Liga. The football championship may well count, with Barça and Real Madrid, two of the richest clubs on the planet, its figures are puzzling. Its cumulative debt would exceed 4 billion euros. And no less than 24 players, including some of the country's most proven talents, left La Liga during the transfer window, lured abroad by now significantly higher salaries. Half of them chose exile to the English Premier League, where there are now around thirty Spaniards.
The damage from the crisis is already very spectacular. The Salamanca club went bankrupt. Albacete's was saved at the last minute thanks to a check from one of its former players, Andres Iniesta, one of Barça's stars. Atletico Madrid, brilliant 3rd of the last season, had to sell Radamel Falcao to AS Monaco to pay off part of his debt, estimated at 180 million euros. Malaga, supposed to play the leading roles after its takeover by Sheikh Abdullah-al-Thani, also has an abysmal deficit. The team has been banned from European competition and sees its players heading abroad. For the first time in more than a decade, Spain sold more players than it bought, proof that its championship no longer attracts the big names in football, Barça and Real excepted.
Equally worrying are the figures from television channels. The two paid broadcasters of the championship admit a decrease in the number of their subscribers. Digital + would have lost around 15% during last season. Marca TV, one of the latest arrivals in the Spanish PAF, has closed shop. Spain is now turning to foreign markets, Asia in the lead, with the hope of finding customers lost in the country.
Football has always constituted a form of economic exception, in Spain as elsewhere. A Liga on the verge of bankruptcy would certainly not prevent Madrid from organizing the Olympic Games in 2020. It remains to be seen whether the poor figures for Spanish sport will weigh on the IOC vote next September in Buenos Aires.
