There had been rumours for a while, heightened by the statement earlier this month by Rafael García Garrido, Director General of the Las Ventas empresa Plaza 1, that Madrid’s Feria de Otoño would not be televised unless a payment from the streaming platform onetoro was forthcoming. Now, onetoro have announced that neither that feria nor Sevilla’s Feria de San Miguel will be shown despite the original plans to do so (no mention has been made as to whether the planned televising of Enrique Ponce’s October 9 despedida in Valencia will also be binned).

In making this announcement, onetoro have also revealed the financial situation of their subscription-based service. After less than two years of operation, having committed expenditure of 20 million euros on image rights, and seven million euros on production and promotion costs, the balance sheet shows a loss of 12 million euros. The company has pointed to two main factors leading to this situation - subscription numbers having failed to match their original projections, and the mundillo’s expectations with regard to image rights payments.

According to onetoro, they originally anticipated gaining 200,000 subscribers in Spain alone, but, by July this year, the service had only attracted approaching 60,000 subscribers world-wide. Service security appears to have been a major problem; onetoro claim that 3 in every 4 viewers in Spain have accessed the platform “illegally,” while in Mexico and Peru that figure rises to 19 in every 20!

Based on this experience, onetoro conclude, “The target audience willing to pay for this content will never generate the necessary income to cover the exorbitant amounts that are required, in terms of image rights, to broadcast a live bullfight.”

Is it all over?

Onetoro go on to say, “The private investors of this company are not willing to continue investing if there is not a big agreement that makes continuing the project viable.” After stating that the company’s investors feel they are subsidising the mundillo, onetoro alleges “a lack of responsibility on the part of the sector. With this decision [to cease live transmissions], we want to make the sector aware that they have the responsibility to organize and industrialize as have done many sectors that depend on rights income. These sectors have not only achieved this successfully, but have also improved their visibility by attracting investment. But this transition has only one path - the union of all stakeholders in the industry with a concise and transparent roadmap, where private investment is predictable and sustainable. It must stop becoming a model where the investor always loses.

“We understand that this is not an easy transition, so we are preparing a season for 2025 where image rights depend directly on the audience, as is the case with other espectáculos - a circuit that will feature all the bullrings interested in this variable model, and where empresarios, toreros and ganaderos participate in the income generated by their audience in a transparent and balanced way. We understand that this model reflects the real value of the image rights that are generated […] It is time to evolve and update, taking on board the reality of the current circumstances.”

So, the company is hoping to continue into next season, although whether they do so remains to be seen. Onetoro announced an ambitious programme for 2024, with 117 corridas intended to be shown live, six production series, summaries of festejos in over 40 bullrings and a number of special transmissions. The hope for a unified response from what is a patchwork sector may not be realised. Onetoro’s investors clearly backed entry into the market in a big way, anticipating sizable profits as a result, and a much reduced programme in 2025 may well not retain their support. Also, there may be other potential operators out there wishing to compete: although the level of initial investment needed may put off a number of potential newcomers, might Movistar consider a return of its ‘Canal Toros’ television offering? (As Zabala de la Serna points out in an article for El Mundo, however, “While the taurinos always thought the televising of ferias by Canal Toros was a great business for Movistar Plus, the reality was that only the financial muscle of [parent company] Telefónica could sustain the annual losses involved.”)

Not only are there questions the mundillo must answer in terms of establishing a sustainable medium for the future, there are questions for onetoro too. How can streaming security be improved? Will image rights payments be based on the true number of spectators, which they are clearly able to gauge, or only on paying subscribers? What will the level of future subscriptions be (the higher the fee, the higher the likelihood of people seeking alternative methods of watching)? And how will subscriber confidence be won back given the experience of an early end to onetoro’s 2024 temporada?

It remains to be seen whether onetoro has suffered a mere pinchazo or an estocada de muerte. Streaming is clearly the medium of the future, but the mundillo’s track record in modernising does not fill one with hope that the onetoro initiative can be maintained. The ‘sistema’ seems clearly focused on making money while it can and has shown little interest in formulating a long-term vision for the sector.