Failing to face a great void, French football will be able to get some fresh air, at least until the end of the 2020-2021 season. Since the failure of the Sino-Spanish broadcaster Mediapro this fall, 80% of French football TV rights have been vacant. Canal + and the Professional Football League (LFP) finally reached an agreement, Thursday, February 4, for the encrypted channel, a subsidiary of Vivendi, to recover the broadcasting rights for Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 until the end. of the current season, announced the LFP and the Canal + group in a joint press release.
From the 25e day of Ligue 1 as of Ligue 2 (the weekend of February 13 and 14), Canal + will have for each day “Exclusive audiovisual rights, live and in full, to all Ligue 1 Uber Eats matches and eight of the ten Ligue 2 BKT matches”, specify the chain and the LFP.
“This is good news because the situation was quite dramatic and the negotiations led by [le patron de la Ligue] Vincent Labrune was very efficient. It was not easy to find this solution ”, reacted on RMC the president of Lyon, Jean-Michel Aulas. According to him, Canal + “Shows that we can count on him, despite difficult positions in recent days”.
The LFP had given up on Monday to allocate the television broadcasting rights of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2, previously attributed to Mediapro, for lack of sufficient offers. “Following the call for tenders declared unsuccessful this week, the Professional Football League and the Canal + Group are pleased to have found a comprehensive solution”, state both parties in this press release.
49% drop in television revenues for clubs in L1
According to several sources with knowledge of the file questioned by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Vivendi subsidiary has proposed an extension of 35 million euros, in addition to what it already pays to Ligue 1 (330 million euros for the season), in order to recover all the matches neglected by Mediapro. According to these same sources, the LFP presented to the board of directors on Thursday a 49% drop in club television revenues for the 2020-2021 season in Ligue 1, a drop of 40% for Ligue 2.
This is a huge turnaround for French football, in conflict in recent weeks with its former historic broadcaster, who had requested the organization of a global call for tenders including the batch of matches broadcast by Canal +. This agreement will definitively mark the departure of Mediapro from the market with the closure of its Téléfoot channel, which must broadcast until the end of the 24e day, Sunday.
However, this agreement only runs until the end of the season: it will then be necessary to renegotiate the marketing of the rights for the next seasons, with the various operators concerned.
The clubs will have to lower their charges
But the French professional clubs, which had speculated on the explosion of television revenues with the arrival of Mediapro, will have to deal with the disappearance of a good part of this manna. However, this weighs heavily on their economy. In Olympic Nîmes, for example, these TV rights represent more than two-thirds of the budget (with regard to the data for the 2018-2019 season).
At the start of the 2020 school year, all Ligue 1 clubs expected a deficit of 250 million euros at the end of the current season. At the end of December, taking into account in particular the Mediapro debacle, the estimate of losses had been revised upwards. “They will probably be closer to 800 million euros”, had declared, to The team, Jean-Marc Mickeler, head of the national management control department, commission responsible for monitoring the finances of French football.
In an interview with World, on January 12, the president of the Stade de Reims, Jean-Pierre Caillot, stressed that the urgency for the clubs was now to be able to “Pay their players until the end of June”. “If we don’t reduce the charges, there will be no miracle. On the one hand, there will be clubs with powerful shareholders who will have the cash flow, then on the other, 60% to 70% of the clubs that will not have the capacity ”, he warned.
