Mediaset ordered to pay ITV €73m
May 22, 2026
From David Del Valle in Madrid
Mediaset Spain has been ordered to pay €73.2 million to UK broadcaster and format owner ITV in one of the largest television rights rulings ever seen in Spain.
The Provincial Court of Madrid partially upheld an appeal by ITV that significantly increased the compensation Mediaset España must pay over profits generated from what the court deemed the irregular exploitation of a format between 2012 and 2019.
The decision comes just 24 hours after Spain’s Supreme Court dealt a separate blow to Atresmedia, ordering Antena 3 to stop broadcasting El Rosco after recognising that the rights to the iconic segment belong to production company MC&F, rather than ITV.
Together, the rulings mark a dramatic escalation in what has become one of the most complex and expensive intellectual property disputes in European television history.
At the centre of the dispute is Pasapalabra, the Spanish adaptation of The Alphabet Game, a UK-created format originally developed for the BBC in the 1990s. Rights to the format ultimately became part of ITV’s catalogue following a succession of corporate acquisitions involving Action Time and Granada.
The Madrid court’s latest judgment reinforces an earlier 2019 Spanish Supreme Court ruling which forced Telecinco, Mediaset’s Spanish channel, to stop airing Pasapalabra after determining that the broadcaster had breached contractual agreements with ITV.
The litigation stretches back more than 15 years and centres on competing claims over both the Pasapalabra format and El Rosco, the high-profile final round that became the show’s signature element in Spain.
In a separate Supreme Court ruling involving Atresmedia, judges concluded that MC&F owns the rights to El Rosco, forcing Antena 3 to halt broadcasts of the segment despite the programme’s ratings success.