Villarreal and Barcelona’s La Liga match in Miami has been postponed, with promoters Relevent saying there is “insufficient time” to organise the event.
A Relevent statement, first published by The Athletic on Tuesday evening, read: “Relevent has informed La Liga of the need to postpone the planned match between Villarreal CF and FC Barcelona in Miami on December 20.
“Given the current uncertainty in Spain, there is insufficient time to properly execute an event of this scale. It would also be irresponsible to begin selling tickets without a confirmed match in place.”
Relevent Sports, the events promoter and media rights company co-founded and owned by billionaire Miami Dolphins owner Stephen M.Ross, has a joint venture with La Liga to grow the league’s business in North America and the game was due to be played at the Dolphins’ Hard Rock stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
While Relevent described the match as “postponed”, La Liga’s own statement said “the decision has been made to cancel” the event, saying it “deeply regrets” the news and describing it as detrimental to “the international profile of the entire football ecosystem”.
“LALIGA announces that, following conversations with the promoter of the Official LALIGA Match in Miami, the decision has been made to cancel the organisation of the event due to the uncertainty that has arisen in Spain over the past few weeks,” read the league’s statement.
“LALIGA deeply regrets that this project, which represented a historic and unparalleled opportunity for the internationalisation of Spanish football, cannot go ahead.
“The staging of an official match outside our borders would have been a decisive step in the global expansion of our competition, strengthening the international presence of clubs, the positioning of players and the Spanish football brand in a strategic market such as the United States.
“The project fully complied with federation regulations and did not affect the integrity of the competition, as confirmed by the competent institutions that oversee compliance, which opposed it for other reasons.
“In a context of increasing global competitiveness, where leagues such as the Premier League and competitions such as the UEFA Champions League continue to increase their reach and ability to generate resources, initiatives such as this are essential to ensure the sustainability and growth of Spanish football.
“Passing up such opportunities makes it difficult to generate new revenue, limits clubs’ ability to invest and compete, and reduces the international profile of the entire football ecosystem.”
In August, the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) approved the request for December’s La Liga fixture between Villarreal and Barcelona to be played in Miami.
The fixture was initially scheduled to take place on the weekend of December 20-21 at Villarreal’s Estadio de la Ceramica home in eastern Spain.
It would have been the first time a European top-flight league fixture has taken place in the U.S, although the Spanish Super Cup has been held in Saudi Arabia in the four of the last five seasons.
On October 6, UEFA approved Italian and Spanish domestic league matches being staged overseas in a landmark ruling, while reiterating its “clear opposition” to the plans, which it said were granted “on an exceptional basis amid regulatory gaps at global level”.
Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European football’s governing body, described the decision as “regrettable” and said that it should “not be seen as setting a precedent” and that “league matches should be played on home soil”.
Serie A, the top division of Italian football, is planning to play a match between Milan and Como in Australia, with discussions having taken place over the fixture being staged in the city of Perth on the weekend of February 7-8, 2026.
La Liga’s controversial proposal sparked fury and raised questions about the league’s integrity, with the Spanish football supporters’ association, FASFE, joining with Villarreal and Barca fan groups to express their “absolute, total and firm opposition” to the plans.
Over the weekend, La Liga sides did not start play for the opening 15 seconds of matches after the Spanish Footballers’ Association (AFE) said on Friday the players were unhappy with the league’s plans for the game to be held in Miami.
However, those protests were not widely broadcast after the Spanish league asked TV companies not to show them, according to multiple people familiar with the request.
During matches at Oviedo and Barcelona, TV cameras instead showed the exterior of the stadiums before returning to show the pitch when the 15-second protests concluded.
At other games, the aerial camera zoomed in on the centre circle, rather than a wide angle showing both sets of players standing still.
Real Madrid have called on FIFA, global football’s governing body, to prevent the fixtures from taking place in Miami, saying it would undermine the “integrity” of La Liga and prove to be an unwelcome “turning point in the world of football”.
Glenn Micallef — the EU commissioner for intergenerational fairness, youth, culture and sport — has said moving the fixture would be “betrayal” of the Spanish clubs’ local communities and also called for discussions with representatives across the game to tackle this and several other controversial topics in football.
The Spanish league first attempted to stage a match abroad in 2018 with a proposal for Girona’s home league game against Barcelona to be played in Miami. However, this was met with opposition from both the RFEF and FIFA, world football’s governing body, as was a similar proposal the following year to play Atletico Madrid’s league match against Villarreal in the U.S..
Since then, relations between La Liga and the RFEF have improved. Meanwhile, the possibility of playing domestic league fixtures abroad has increased after FIFA was dropped from a landmark lawsuit by Relevent in April 2024.
‘A major embarrassment for all involved’
Analysis by Spain correspondent Dermot Corrigan
The news that Villarreal against Barcelona was not going to be played in Miami in December came as a huge shock, and is a major embarrassment for all involved, especially La Liga president Javier Tebas.
Tebas has been planning for years to play La Liga games in the US, and it seemed he had finally pulled it off, with UEFA giving their grudging approval to the idea, and planning had advanced to the stage that tickets were about to go on general sale for the game at the Hard Rock Stadium.
While there was plenty of opposition to the game taking place, including symbolic protests from players at many La Liga clubs (including Barcelona) and loud howls of dissent from Real Madrid, it had seemed that Tebas and those planning the game were going to pull it off.
Earlier on Tuesday, just hours before the news broke, Barca president Joan Laporta spoke defiantly to reporters after his pre-match meal with Olympiakos president Evangelos Marinakis before their teams Champions League group game at Montjuic.
“Real Madrid can say what they want, and will do what suits them,” Laporta said. I’m Barcelona president and we will go and play in Miami on December 20.”
The news that game will now take place back in Villarreal means Laporta – and also Tebas – were left with a lot of egg on their faces.
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