Control of the media is one of the ultimate levers of power. Just ask Grupo Clarín, Argentina’s largest and most important media conglomerate, which engineered a last-ditch master play this week that allowed it to cash in on one of its crown jewels, TyC Sports, while securing the rights to air all 104 matches of the all-conquering FIFA World Cup, which is being staged this year in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In a football-mad nation like Argentina – where the national team led
by Líonel Messi is the current world champion and has a chance of being competitive once the ball starts rolling in the most important sports competition in the world next month – failing to air the World Cup would have been a massive failure for Clarín’s market-leading cable operator Flow, which was born out of the ashes of the Cablevisión-Multicanal merger that took place during the heyday of Kirchnerism and the firm’s successive acquisition of Telecom in 2025. As well as securing those rights, the
media powerhouse – which is still run by Héctor Magnetto, who at 81 years old is still very much in the game – has outskirted an attempt by Claudio ‘Chiqui’ (“Tiny”) Tapia, president of Argentina’s football federation AFA, to block their access to football broadcasting going forward. Tapia, who is under siege and facing corruption allegations, which have led to media carnage in great part led by the newspapers Clarín and La Nación, and judicial investigations, is an ally of Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel
Kicillof, the Peronist leader who seeks to dispute the Presidency with Javier Milei next year and who is also in a confrontation with Clarín. Yes, it’s Argentina; it’s that intertwined and complex. And it gets better. From a business perspective, here’s what happened this week. Grupo Clarín sold its 50-percent stake in TyC Sports and motorsports channel Carburando to the Grupo Werthein conglomerate for US$25 million. Vrio Corp, the owner of the DirecTV Latin America and Sky Brazil (both owned by Grupo Werthein), then signed
a deal with Personal-Flow (owned by Clarín) to have its sports channel, DSports, distributed on Flow, granting it access to the full 104 matches of the FIFA World Cup 2026, which is set to kick off on June 11 at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. From an analyst’s perspective, Clarín has finally ceded its position in sports content, one of the growth drivers over decades for the media giant, to concentrate on distribution and connectivity. Grupo Werthein, run by the former Foreign Minister Gerardo
Werthein’s family members Adrián and Darío, reinforces its sports programming at a Latin American level, having also secured control of Torneos, the production company that had a stake in its namesake channel (TyC Sports), having also bought out the Nofal family. The political connections that emanate from these series of transactions are truly fascinating. Luis Nofal co-founded Torneos y Competencia, together with Carlos Ávila, back in 1982. By 1991, they teamed up with Grupo Clarín and had secured the rights to the first division of
Argentine football during the Carlos Menem Presidency. They had signed a deal with none other than Julio Grondona, the historical head of AFA who was always accused of corruption but always escaped unscathed. He passed away “right in time,” so to speak, as he was signalled as one of the fulcrums of the global corruption scandal known as “FIFAGate” – Grondona coordinated the whole scheme through which TV rights for South American football under the regional governing entity, CONMEBOL, were sold to Torneos at flashsale
prices, while bribes were distributed throughout the continent by Alejandro Burzaco, CEO of TyC, at the behest of “the Godfather,” as Grondona was sometimes called. He wore a ring on his left pinky with the phrase “todo pasa,” or, “everything passes.” Talk about impunity. Burzaco ended up cracking and collaborating with US prosecutors. Torneos was also a key piece of the all-out war between Grupo Clarín and Kirchnerism that erupted during the late 2000s and early 2010s, particularly during Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s two terms
as president. Many forget that Clarín and Néstor Kirchner were key allies, to the point that the first Kirchnerite leader’s final act in government was signing the decree that approved the merger between the country’s two largest cable operators, Clarin’s Cablevisión and Multicanal, to create a de facto monopoly. It marked Clarín’s evolution from content producer to media distributor. By 2009, things had soured and. Fernández de Kirchner broke with Clarín; she did not forgive the firm for turning on her during agricultural protests the
previous year. The then-president revoked Torneo’s TV rights deal, inaugurating the infamous ‘Fútbol para Todos’ era, in which the broadcasting of Argentine football was essentially nationalised and freely distributed via state channel TV Pública. The move was very popular as it broke football out of the premium, paid-for TV segment, becoming free for everyone to see, a decision ultimately paid by the Argentine taxpayer. The scheme was also a cash cow with direct connections to the FIFAGate scandal and prompted allegations of domestic corruption by
AFA and members of the Kirchnerite government. When later Fernández de Kirchner’s administration passed her new “media law,” forcing Clarín to divest its assets, Torneos was front and centre of the dispute but the media juggernaut managed to resist judicially through crafty dilation techniques. Following Mauricio Macri’s 2015 electoral victory, the Fútbol para Todos scheme was finally dismantled by 2017 and AFA sold the TV rights of top-tier football to US firms Fox and Turner. The Nofal family also has its political connections. TyC founder
Luis’ sons, Daniel and Esteban, recently signed the sale of their stake in Torneos to Grupo Werthein. They are the siblings of Mónica Nofal, the romantic partner of Marcelo Grandío, the journalist behind Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni’s incriminating private charter flights to Punta del Este. As Perfil’s Giselle Leclercq recently reported, they were important donors to Adorni’s campaign to be legislator in Buenos Aires City during last year’s elections. They also founded branches of La Libertad Avanza, Milei’s libertarian coalition, in La Pampa and Jujuy
provinces. They’ve also set foot in the Casa Rosada on several occasions, the purpose of which wasn’t detailed in official documents. Yet, close associates of them helped negotiate a US$4- million deal with the state media for Torneos to transmit 10 World Cup matches. Grupo Clarín, which is looking to consolidate its distribution business after the acquisition of Spanish-telco giant Telefónica’s Argentine assets last year, has picked a fight with President Milei. Though Clarín was undoubtedly one of the media companies that supported Milei in
his emergence as an anti-Kirchnerite alternative in the 2023 presidential election, at some point there was a rupture in the relationship. It is not uncommon for Clarín to change its posture on a particular administration when its interests stop coinciding – the President has a post pinned to the top of his social media page on X (formerly Twitter) that reads “Clarín, the great Argentine scam,” playing on the newspaper’s historic slogan. Given the importance of social media for this administration, this is clearly something
important for Milei, who has accused Clarín of publishing falsities against the government in order to secure its media monopoly in the telecommunications business. Clarin-owned Telecom acquired Telefónica Argentina for US$1.25 billion in February 2025, leading the Milei administration’s decision to try and block the operation pleading anti-trust concerns. In practice, Clarín absorbed the media assets and consolidated its structure which includes AGEA (where the newspaper and media assets are housed), Artear (TV assets), and Telecom (telecommunication assets including Personal, Telefónica, and Flow), among other
firms. Control of the media means cultural production, and therefore a population’s subjectivity, is someone’s decision. For nearly a century, Clarín has been a key player in the construction of the Argentine collective subconscious, so to speak, furthering its own business interests by teaming up or breaking with certain political sectors. In the US during the 2008 financial meltdown there was a nickname for the most powerful investment bank on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs: it was dubbed “the Vampire squid,” its tentacles reached far and
wide into the government. Clarín is Argentina’s “Vampire squid,” and there’s little chance that Milei will break them. In the meantime, they’ll be streaming the World Cup – and everyone will be watching.
Grupo Clarín, TyC Sports, FIFA World Cup 2026, Flow, DSports, Personal-Flow, Grupo Werthein, Vrio Corp, DirecTV Latin America, Sky Brazil, Torneos, Nofal family, Claudio Tapia, Axel Kicillof, Javier Milei, Telecom, Telefónica Argentina