Calderon: Real Madrid TV deal biggest in sports history

Real Madrid President, Roman Calderon has hailed his club's new 1.1bn euro television deal as 'the biggest deal in sports history.'
 
Spanish Television giant Mediapro signed the deal with Real on Monday, and will pay the Spanish side roughly 157m euros a year until the contract ends in the 2012/2013 season.

Despite falling behind Barcelona in recent years, with their last La Liga title in the 2002/2003 season, Real have shown that they still command huge audiences worldwide, and are thus able to attract massive TV and sponsorship deals, a financial vindication of the much maligned 'Galactico' era.

"By signing said contract, Real Madrid are guaranteed to earn more than 1.1 billion euros for their audiovisual rights over the next seven seasons, including the current one."

"This agreement sets a new club milestone being that it constitutes the most important contract for audiovisual rights that any sporting club around the world has signed to date."

Interestingly, Mediapro, a Catalan company, signed a TV rights deal with Real rivals, Barcelona, several months ago.

However, Barca's deal amounted to 100m euros less than what Real have been awarded and some sections of the Catalan media have decided to ignore the news, attesting to the Barcelona public's shock and disappointment over the deal.