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Spain will not make clubs strike joint TV deals

A battle over hundreds of millions of euros of income from TV deals escalated this month when some richer teams said they planned to create a separate first division.

Poorer clubs urged the Socialist government to introduce the collective negotiation used in rival European leagues to boost their income and help them avoid insolvency.

"I don't believe that you would be happy to see an interventionist government," he said.

"It's an issue they have to resolve themselves, there has to be self regulation," he added. "They have to sit down at the table and work out the best model."

In Spain, clubs negotiate their own deals with TV companies, unlike in the English Premier League, the German Bundesliga and France's Ligue 1, where deals are struck together and revenue shared out.

Real Madrid and Barcelona, the world's richest clubs by revenue, take half the pot, with deals worth about 150 million euros a season, leaving the rest, some of whom are in dire financial trouble, to fight over the scraps.

"It's important to have this concept of solidarity," he said. "If that can be achieved with agreement between all clubs so much the better."

The planned sports law will also create an independent body to control clubs' finances, with powers to punish transgressors by excluding them from competition, Lissavetzky said.

"We are experiencing a global economic crisis and I believe the biggest cause was a lack of regulation of the financial sector," Lissavetzky said.

"We have to learn from the subprime (mortgage crisis) and this is why there will be an independent control body that will allow clubs to take part or not take part in competitions a