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Elected against all odds
His glibness, his appetite for crisis management and his sense of the balance of power will not be too much to try to save Ligue 1 from the economic slump in which football clubs have been stuck since the health crisis and non-payment. by Mediapro, the main broadcaster of the championship, of its latest bill, 172 million euros (the audiovisual group must pay clubs 814 million per year until 2024). This is the first hot file that Vincent Labrune, 49, has to manage since he was elected, on September 10, a little by surprise, president of the Professional Football League (LFP) against Michel Denisot.
Trained in Marseille
He knows perfectly well the mysteries of French football since he was president of Olympique de Marseille for five years, between 2011 and 2016. A record of longevity since Bernard Tapie but not a peak of popularity for Labrune, whose results are mixed: six coaches – including the whimsical Argentine technician Marcelo Bielsa, who would become the idol of the Stade-Vélodrome -, a single trophy – the Coupe de la Ligue in 2012 – and an unresolved conflict between Didier Deschamps, then coach, and the sports director, José Anigo. Labrune is also not helped by the owner, Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, who is injecting less and less money into her club.
Shadow OM
In the early 2000s, it was their passion for sport and a common friendship with the former boxer Louis Acariès that brought Labrune and Robert Louis-Dreyfus (“RLD”), the Franco-Swiss businessman and owner together. of OM since 1996. Very quickly, Labrune became the advisor and spokesperson for “RLD”, then, in 2008, chairman of the club’s supervisory board. Labrune provides the link between the owner and the club and is active in the shadows. He thus participated in the dismissal of presidents Pape Diouf (2009) and Jean-Claude Dassier (2011). Two years after the death of “RLD” in 2009, his widow, Margarita, further broadened his prerogatives by appointing him president.
Vincent Travolta
A native of Orleans, graduated in economics from the Sorbonne, Labrune began his career in 1994 as press attaché for the sports department of France Télévisions, where he inherited the nickname “Vincent Vega”, a character played by John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, because of her shoulder-length hair. His power of seduction wreaked havoc with journalists and decision-makers: he became the right-hand man of Jean-Luc Delarue in the early 2000s before Etienne Mougeotte, the vice-president of TF1, debauchery to take care of group communication. Labrune is also a businessman who has co-produced several films, including The unfaithful, with Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche.
