And the impossible became possible … The horizon finally cleared for the Professional Football League (LFP), three days after the failure of the call for tenders for the French championship. Canal + ended up calling the LFP, Thursday, February 4 at noon, to accept what it had been refusing it since November 2020: an agreement by mutual agreement. For the end of the 2020-2021 season, i.e. the last fourteen days of the championship, the historic partner of French football will therefore broadcast the entirety of Ligue 1 (L1), which had not happened since 2008.
Canal + has thus agreed to pay 203 million euros. A real call for air for clubs financially strangled by the Covid-19 crisis and the failure, in December 2020, of the Mediapro group. This amount includes the three installments of 56 million euros each that the Vivendi subsidiary still owed to the LFP by the end of the season – by virtue of the two matches per week that it has broadcast so far -, as well an additional cash payment of 35 million euros. Finally, the clubs will receive, this season, 700 million euros for Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 (L2), a decrease of about 40% compared to the 1.2 billion euros that Mediapro were to bring them, Canal +, BeIN Sports and Free.
Within the LFP, the time has come for relief. Now that the end of the season has been saved, she believes that she can think calmly about what to do next, and continue discussions over-the-counter with the various candidates: Canal +, but also Dazn, a sort of Netflix for sport, Amazon and Discovery, who had applied. monday 1er February to the call for tenders. In any case, the latter did not wish to take over from Mediapro on short notice, and the offers they had made concerned the coming seasons.
Huge discount
However, the path will not be paved with roses. Canal +, which counts as the first shareholder Vincent Bolloré, informed the LFP that he wanted, for the following seasons, a call for tenders on all the lots, including the matches that BeIN Sports sublicensed him for. 330 million euros per year. A request that Canal + has officially formulated since January, based on the sports code, but which would force the LFP to break its contract with BeIN Sports, which it does not want.
In the eyes of the League, the legal argument put forward by Canal + has just fallen, the latter having accepted a first mutual agreement. The outcome of legal proceedings initiated by the audiovisual group before the Paris Commercial Court and the Competition Authority should shed light on how the LFP should proceed.
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