PRESENTATION OF THE CONTRACT SIGNED BETWEEN TELEFONICA MEDIA AND ULEB.

Today, September 13th, the contract signed by Telefónica Media and ULEB has been presented in the head office of Telefonica in Madrid.

Telefónica Media owns 70% of the company called Euroleague Marketing which is a company that manages the audio-visual and Internet rights and the merchandising and sponsorship areas of the Euroleague.

The other partners in this new company are on the one hand ULEB which owns the 25% of the company and on the other hand Mediapro which owns a 5%.

The Managing Director of Telefónica Sports Mr.José Manuel Deus emphasized that this is a new model which can be applied to other sports such as football being at the same time a clear precedent for the future European Football League.According to the General Manager of Telefónica Media Mr. Alberto Ennis this championship is like the embryo of different sport projects and he admitted that they were involved in three possible new ones.Mr.Deus confirmed that Telefónica Media guarantees 35$ millions to the 24 teams for the next five years.

The President of ULEB Mr.Eduardo Portela put a great stress on the fact that Telefónica is not a sponsor for the new Euroleage.It is our partner in this common project. Mr.Portela undelined that today was a very important day for professional sports, especially for basketball.

Euroleague's Chief Executive Officer Mr. Jordi Bertomeu talked about issues related to the championship and also about economic and legal issues. He also referred to the distribution of the money among the clubs and pointed out that this would be an uneven distribution .The money is going to be distributed depending on the value of the clubs as this was already agreed. In relation to FIBA he stressed the non-existance of current relationships between the two organizations. He explained that the ''Euroleague is not against anybody and that seems that FIBA is very worried about us'' and also that ''we are not going to use any economic procedures in order to sign more teams''.

He also mentioned that the problem with the referees was already solved.
There are 68 candidates and about 50 of them will be selected, with 80% of the referees being internationals.

Telefónica Media is about to sign some contracts with different European TVs which will broadcast the games of the Euroleague. More than 170 games are going to be broadcasted all around Europe,South and Central America and the USA.The games will be broadcasted by both public and pay channels. In Spain the games will also be broadcast by the two different systems.

The General Assembly of the clubs of the Euroleague will also be held in the same day in Madrid.

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