A ray of light in a crowded sky. By announcing, Friday, December 10, the broadcast on the BeIN Sports television channel, from the end of the month, of one meeting of the French men’s championship per week – as well as most of the matches of the final stages (playoffs) and all finals games – the National Basketball League (LNB) sees several months of black screen coming to an end.
Deprived of a broadcaster since the start of the season, French basketball suffered from a lack of visibility, which the French indoor sports, as a whole, know too well. Returning from the Tokyo Olympics this summer, weighted down with a myriad of medals, the French “BHV” (for basketball, handball, volleyball) has found a much less flashy daily life.
In terms of practice, the three disciplines can welcome a resurgence of new amateur licensees. But the professional clubs, for their part, find it difficult to improve, at the level of their respective championships, the “Formidable com campaign” – the words are from the president of the French Handball Federation, Philippe Bana – which constituted the gold gleaned by handball (women and men) and volleyball (men), as well as silver (men) and bronze (women) won by basketball during the Tokyo summer.
With the pandemic ebbing at the start of the school year and the lifting of restrictions, spectators, however, have flocked to the theaters to watch the matches. “There is an undeniable OJ effect, the public is coming back”, notes David Tebib, president of the National Association of Professional Sports Leagues and ex-president of the National Handball League.
But the competitions of the “BHV” take place in relative anonymity at the national level: even if these three sports are stamped “sports which win”, less than three years before the Olympic Games in Paris, even if they are recognized for their ability. to shape new champions at regular intervals, they struggle to benefit from a wide and regular television broadcast – with one exception, handball – which would bring to the hexagonal clubs another dimension.
“We had to pay for the production”
“The television channels are extremely cautious and consider that anything that is not football is risky”, asserts Yves Bouget, the president of the National Volleyball League. “On television, in France, there are so-called ‘premium’ products, such as football, rugby, tennis … and national team sports teams”, supports Jean-Pierre Siutat, president of the French Basketball Federation (FFBB), questioned before the announcement of the LNB.
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