Pereira da Costa rejects Nacional plan: “Portugal isn't England” | OneFootball

In statements to the newspaper O JOGO, FC Porto CFO José Pedro Pereira da Costa, who represents the club on the Board of Directors of Liga Centralização, made the Dragons’ position in the TV rights centralization process clear. “FC Porto has been involved in this process with a sense of responsibility, institutional loyalty, and based on assumptions of rationality that do not jeopardize the competitiveness of Portuguese football, the sustainability of the clubs that contribute most to enhancing the competition and, naturally, the UEFA ranking,” he began, before reinforcing the blue-and-whites’ position regarding the centralization proposal put forward by Rui Alves.

“What we cannot accept is an attempt to import, uncritically, distribution models used in England, France, or Spain, as if the Portuguese reality were comparable to those markets. The president of Nacional, without meaning any disrespect to the club’s fan base, wants to compare realities that are not comparable. Clubs in those countries have different demographics, different membership bases, incomparably larger domestic markets, and a very strong regional identification with their clubs, reflected in very high attendance at their matches, which, I repeat with no disrespect whatsoever, Nacional does not have,” he said, alluding to what André Villas-Boas had already said, pointing to an average attendance of around 50 percent at the islanders’ stadium.

Therefore, for FC Porto, it is “impossible” to accept distribution criteria “such as those Mr. Rui Alves seeks to defend.” For Porto supporters, centralization in Portugal “will only make sense if it respects the Portuguese reality, the actual weight of each club in creating value, viewership, membership size, international reach, and contribution to the overall competitiveness of Portuguese football,” he continued, recalling that UEFA “uses similar criteria in the distribution of Champions League revenue, in which only 27.5% is shared on an equal basis.” “In the 2024/25 season, the ratio between the club with the highest revenue [PSG] and the one with the lowest [Slovan Bratislava] was around eight times, reflecting better sporting performance and the commercial value of the clubs,” he recalled.

For José Pereira da Costa, Nacional’s president, by taking this “extreme position, not only disrespects the work that has been carried out within Liga Centralização, but also introduces noise and instability into the process.” In the Porto CFO’s opinion, such an attitude “will only devalue the product that Liga Centralização has sought to maximize, making the figures ‘publicized’ by Mr. Rui Alves impossible to achieve, because the implied overall value of the rights will be a fiction,” he said.

In that scenario, Pereira da Costa guarantees that FC Porto “will certainly find alternative ways of individually marketing other audiovisual assets in order to preserve the value of the TV rights it currently receives.” In conclusion, the executive says that FC Porto “will not agree to any distribution key” that departs from the principles discussed and approved within the Liga Centralização process. “If the path defended by Nacional is pursued, FC Porto will no longer continue to collaborate in the centralization process and will fight politically and legally against whatever model is imposed. Anyone who claims to defend a collective solution cannot, at the same time, propose criteria that destroy the economic rationality that makes that solution possible,” he said.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.