The Professional Football League (LFP) announced on Friday March 18 that it had hired “exclusive negotiations” with the CVC investment fund for the latter’s entry into the capital of the commercial company that it will set up in order to manage the television rights of Ligue 1 in particular.
This operation, which would result in the acquisition by this investor of 13% of the capital of this commercial company, was voted unanimously by the board of directors of the LFP. It should enhance the new structure “at 11.5 billion euros”the League said in a statement.
For French football, affected by the failure of the former holder of TV rights, Mediapro, and the health crisis, the creation of a commercial company and the call for a financial player meet a need for liquidity and, more long term, to a desire to find new recipes.
They are made possible by the adoption at the end of February of the “sport” law. The senators had sought to curb the device, by fixing at 15% the share transferable to an external private investor. But the deputies had reduced this threshold to 20%, as initially planned (and wanted by the government).
By appealing to an investment fund, the main French football clubs certainly agree to deprive themselves of part of their revenue. But this is the price to pay to avoid a financial debacle at the end of the season, when Ligue 1 clubs will have accumulated 1.86 billion euros in losses between 2019 and 2022, according to a source close to the LFP.
In return, these same clubs expect to see the new partner develop national audiovisual rights, but above all international and digital.
The Spanish clubs had already taken this same route. And it is also the CVC fund which acquired – despite the opposition of four clubs, including Real Madrid and FC Barcelona – 10% of the capital of a new company created by La Liga, the top structure of the Spanish championship. football, for 2.7 billion euros.
The Italian Football League (Serie A) had tried to do the same, but the project failed to convince the clubs, while a consortium of funds, including CVC and Advent, were ready to promote Italian football 15 billion euros by injecting 1.5 billion euros.