The Administrative Court of Sport (TAD) has opened proceedings for a very serious infringement against the president of La Liga, Javier Tebas, for having published information on Barcelona’s VIP boxes last April, as reported by Cadena SER and confirmed by EL PAÍS. The decision comes after the Superior Council of Sport (CSD) presented the organization on October 20 with a complaint from a member of the Barça club and Miguel Galán, owner of the Cenafe coaching school and president of the Transparency in Sport association, against the head of the employers’ association for revealing confidential data about Barça. It was joined by 17 other members of the body chaired by Joan Laporta.
By opening the file, the TAD must now clarify whether the legislation has been violated by disclosing, in a statement published on 2 April 2025 on the La Liga website, information and data that the Barça club sent to the employers’ association in compliance with the rules for the preparation of the financial statements of sports clubs and sports joint stock companies (SAD). The publication of this data, according to the organization, may constitute a very serious violation of Article 76.2a of the Sports Law. The sanctions for the alleged illicit conduct are dismissal from office, temporary disqualification from two months to one year or public warning.
According to the complainants, the statement published on the employer’s website revealed financial data subject to the obligation of confidentiality set out in Article 5 of the Rules for the Preparation of La Liga’s financial statements. This point specifies that “the information, data and documents that the clubs/SADs will provide to LaLiga in compliance with these rules will be confidential and will be subject to data protection legislation, without prejudice to the obligations deriving from the information obligations of the judicial and administrative bodies”.
After Barça’s complaint, the employers removed the information from their website. The text was published in the midst of the crisis due to Dani Olmo’s recording. LaLiga and Barcelona have exchanged a series of statements. The organization declared on April 2 that the Barça club did not comply with the rules fair play financial and of not having registered in time in the accounts the 100 million euros deriving from the sale of 475 VIP seats at the Camp Nou.
Five days later, Barça responded with another message accusing Tebas of violating the confidentiality obligation. The body chaired by Laporta ensured that it had not given permission for the publication of the data, so LaLiga deleted the statement from the site and the rest of the official channels and responded again: “In relation to the note published by FC Barcelona, LALIGA wishes to express its total disagreement with the accusation relating to an alleged violation of the obligation of confidentiality due to the dissemination, by this institution, of the press release to which FC Barcelona refers.” More than seven months later, the TAD opened a disciplinary file to determine whether Tebas violated the rules or not.
