Liga Portugal reached an agreement with a new sponsor for the main echelon of Portuguese football, the bookmaker Bwin, which recently acquired bet.pt. So, starting next season the Liga NOS will be renamed Liga Bwin.
Although there is still no confirmation of official figures, the newspaper A BOLA writes that the naming sponsor has a duration of more than four years and worth more than 5 million euros per season.
However, the process that has dragged on for months may now end in court. This is because Betano, another bookmaker that operates in Portugal, had a practically closed agreement with Liga Portugal, which fell at the last minute.
According to the Diário de Notícias, a memorandum of understanding already existed, but Betano complains that it was suddenly removed from the negotiations. Apparently, the League would have preferred Bwin’s contract proposal, which it considered to be the most financially advantageous.
Now, Betano was not satisfied with the decision of Liga Portugal and promises travel to legal channels. In fact, the bookmaker, which sponsors Sporting de Braga and Marítimo in Portugal, sent a letter to the 18 clubs that operate in the first Portuguese echelon.
DN had access to the letter, where Betano says that the understanding with Liga Portugal involved paying 22 million euros over four years.
“We were invited by the representatives of the Liga Portugal to start writing a MoU [memorando de entendimento] outlining the agreed business conditions and, as a result of conversations between stakeholders, we sent out a version of the MoU on March 23 and were told that we should expect the final version to be received back signed in the week following Easter (5th to April 9),” reads the letter.
On March 6, just three days after accepting Betano’s conditions, Liga Portugal announced the breach of the agreement, “Because, allegedly, another company has triggered a contractual clause of naming to sponsor Liga.”
“We were deeply shocked, because in the last few months we were assured that they had carried out legal checks and that there was no contractual right for the benefit of third parties. And that even the rights of the betting sponsor category, which were subject to another sponsorship agreement, would not be an obstacle to the formalization of our agreement,” the letter also reads.
Betano also guarantees that it has shown willingness to offer more than the 22 million euros initially agreed, but that nothing has helped.
The bookmaker considers that, even if there is such a contractual clause, they cannot help feeling “cheated” throughout the negotiations.
Source: Prime Time Zone / Diário de Notícias
