As Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, and Real Madrid all battle it out for the coveted league title, La Liga's executives have finalized the naming rights for Spain's two top divisions.
El Clasico, of course, is this weekend, and for Spanish football fans, it's one of the biggest games this season. This time around, as has been the case in many seasons past, the highly-awaited match between two of the biggest teams in the world could end up deciding the league title as both Barcelona and Real Madrid are within a whisker of current league leaders Atleti.
In any case, many followers of Spanish football's top two tiers may not know this, but La Liga's officially been known as "LaLiga Santander" since 2016. That's due to a partnership with Spanish multi-national bank Banco Santander that started five years ago; prior to this, the league was known as "Liga BBVA" from 2008 to 2016.
It's now been revealed that the two parties have decided to extend their contract for another two years, until the 2022/2023 season, with a potential option for a third year, which would thus see the partnership between La Liga and Banco Santander last until the 2023/2024 term.
Spanish financial publication 2Playbook estimates the deal to be worth approximately $23.8 million (€20 million) per annum over the course of the two, possibly three, year contract.
This deal is especially notable as the same publication has confirmed that Santander won't be sponsoring the UEFA Champions League after the 2020/2021 comes to a close, but the multi-national financial entity still wishes to continue its partnership with La Liga, regardless.
As Rami Aboukhair, Santander's CEO, noted, his organization are "very proud to continue providing our name to the best league in the world, LaLiga Santander. [In addition, we believe that this partnership] represents values with which all of us who work at Banco Santander feel very connected, such as effort, teamwork or committment".
Considering that La Liga was, as of 2019, the sixth most profitable sports league globally after the NFL (American football), MLB (baseball), NBA (basketball), the Premier League, and the NHL (hockey), it's thus only natural that sponsors, both big and small, are continuing to cue up to work with such an organization.
