Changes in future bullfight streaming?
“They called us to invite us out for coffee, as if we were friends - something we are not.” The words of Rafael García Garrido, co-owner of Madrid empresa Plaza 1 along with Simon Casas, about Movistar’s attempts to televise the capital’s Feria de Otoño on their Canal Toros could hardly have been blunter. “They contacted us days before the feria was due to begin and with the carteles already published. They made us an offer which, in our judgement, we considered ridiculous, lacking in respect for the plaza and its afición.” The end result was that this year’s Feria de Otoño was the first not to be televised live in decades.
The same pattern was repeated with Las Ventas’s October 12 Corrida de la Hispanidad, an event that saw Andrés Roca Rey and Francisco de Manuel leave the plaza on shoulders. “Movistar called us about televising the corrida two days beforehand,” reported Garrido, “We didn’t even listen to them.” This time, Garrido went further in his criticism of Canal Toros: “As a subscriber of the channel, I want to know the programming of the season in advance. As an empresario, it’s the same - I need the channel to schedule ferias like San Isidro, because, depending on that, the preparation of the carteles will go in one direction or another. If someone believes […] that you can negotiate the broadcast of a feria the quality of the Feria de Otoño 10 days before its celebration, they don’t know how all this works. […] If you want to televise something, you have to do it in a timely manner: otherwise, don’t bother.”
Canal Toros’ failure to show the Feria de Otoño led to a lot of commentary across taurine websites and social media. Mundotoro.com commented, “If we look at what’s said - because there are no official figures - the number of paying subscribers to Movistar’s Canal Toros is not large. And, it is said, going down. That, translated into annual budget money, is a bad thing. If we add that the economy of bullfighting sits between regular and bad […] two precarious economies are brought together, that of the bullfighting empresas and that of the only pay television channel.
“Until a few years ago, Ignacio Frauca [the current head of Canal Toros], and long before that Hugo Costa, planned the channel in such a way that empresas, toreros, and, most importantly, the TV consumer, knew more or less what was going to be televised in advance, and made their own economic spending plan accordingly. Now, not only is this no longer the case, but [with its belated scheduling] the channel seems to have acquired vices of the worst of bullfighting, exploiting last-minute calls of ‘You have to help!’”
In another article, cultoro.es commented it was rumoured that Castilla-La Mancha’s free television and streaming draws bigger audiences for the bullfights it transmits than Canal Toros and the associated streaming service, Plaza Toros TV (which has world-wide coverage apart from Spain and Portugal), put together.
However, on his Entretoros blog site, the former editor of 6Toros6, José Carlos Arévalo, has taken a more positive view, believing that pay TV and streaming is the future for the sector. After praising Canal Toros’s efforts to keep the bullfighting sector going in the pandemic years of 2020 and ‘21, he writes: “The attitude towards television in the bullfighting world in general is negative. For empresas, accustomed to the short-termism imposed by the contract specifications of the bullrings, it provides important complementary income, but it is not seen as representing a gradual expansion of their clientele; and for toreros, an excess of visibility is regarded as quickly consuming their image. Two incorrect viewpoints, because spectators in the plaza and viewers at home are two different niches of the same market, and, as for ‘consumed bullfighters’, tell that to Morante, Roca Rey, Rufo, Urdiales or Emilio de Justo. If they had not been televised, they would have been ignored […] The pact between los toros and television is very stimulating […] In the Fiesta’s current situation, bullfighting and television are condemned to understand each other. Fortunately.”
The subscription route certainly seems to be the way to go. Earlier this year, amidst much fanfare, a new player, ligaToros, announced it would stream corridas on a pay-per-corrida basis, beginning with a corrida from Almendralejo. The camerawork was poor and the commentary inaudible. Improvements were promised. But their only subsequent live transmissions have consisted of three novilladas from San Agustín de Guadalix and, more recently, the venture has announced it is moving to a subscription basis after all. This appears to be the only way a media company can build up sufficient funds to position it to purchase filming rights to events. Now, though, ligaToros is in the same position as Canal Toros, asking viewers to make subscription payments for a future programme of showings, the contents of which are unknown.
A new player on the horizon
But the current system could be about to experience a shake-up. ABC has reported that Plaza 1 has been approached by the OneFootball streaming platform about showing next year’s Madrid bullfights under the title of OneToro. Indeed, there’s a possibility that the company’s interest goes beyond that; a link-up with the parties that together form Plaza 1 could also give OneFootball access to the ferias of Valencia, Nîmes, Alicante and Albacete, amongst others, enabling coverage to be offered season-wide.
OneFootball began life in the Czech Republic in 2013, but now has its headquarters in Berlin. The OneFootball app features live-scores, statistics and news in 12 different languages from 200 soccer leagues around the world. In 2019, OneFootball partnered with Eleven Sports to gain the rights to stream Spain’s La Liga directly in the UK, and with Sky to transmit 2nd division Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal matches in Germany. It should have sufficient financial strength to rival Movistar, and its offer to Plaza 1 is described as “superpotente”, with an agreement expected to be signed by December.
Agreeing a transmission schedule with empresas in advance of a temporada beginning is clearly the way subscription-based pay TV and associated streaming should operate, bringing a degree of certainty to subscribers as to what their payments will enable them to see over the course of a season. In the light of OneFootball’s interest, it will be interesting to see if Movistar/Plaza Toros TV up their game or cede the field. Another possibility is that aficionados may end up with two major players covering different ferias between them.