Real Madrid and Barcelona Get Richer

Props to Two Naked Liberals for pointing out the recent TV deal Real Madrid and MediaPro signed. It's thought to be worth €1.1 billion for 7 years of broadcasting rights. Not too long before this deal, MediaPro signed a similar deal with Barcelona thought to worth €1 billion. These are pretty big deals and it remains to be seen how much MediaPro will be able to make off of these broadcasts. This seems to be the biggest deal to date even when keeping in mind the higher fees don't start until 2008. Mediaset, an Italian TV network controlled by Berlusconi, signed a deal this spring with Juventus that was reportedly worth €248 million for just two years of broadcasting rights. Sky and Setanta paid £1.8 billion (€2.6billion) for broadcast rights for the English Premiership for 2007-2010. It's the largest price paid but it's for an entire league, not just one team. To give this some perspective, the National Football League's (NFL) TV broadcast rights are estimated to be worth $3.75billion. It's interesting to see these new deals emerging that are worth considerably more than previous deals. A year or three ago the pundits were predicting that the value of broadcasting deals for European clubs would level off. How much longer will they continue to increase?