Is there no one who wants to pay the price for this good old Ligue 1? This Monday, the interminable soap opera of French football television rights experienced a poor new rebound on the occasion of the call for tenders launched by the Professional Football League for the re-allocation of 80% of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 (ie the lots abandoned by the failing broadcaster Mediapro). This was indeed unsuccessful, as announced in the evening the president of the players’ union, Philippe Piat, member of the board of directors of the League. “The candidates’ offers were lower than the reserve prices, end of the match”, he told AFP, before adding that negotiations to assign the rights will now be by mutual agreement.
Four candidates submitted offers according to the team : the web giant Amazon, the DAZN streaming platform, the Discovery group (owner of Eurosport) and Jean-Michel Roussier, the editorial director of Téléfoot, the Mediapro channel. The latter participated in the call for tenders in his own name affirms the team,without link, therefore, with Téléfoot or Mediapro. The LFP, which hoped to reach a minimum of 300 million euros with the four prizes together, found that no application reached the reserve prices of any of the prizes. Even if a member of the board of directors of the League believes according to RMC that there was a “nice surprise”, Amazon’s offer via their Prime Video platform. The LFP will decide within forty-eight hours of the rest of the events.
“We would like everything to be overhauled”
This Monday, the main players in the French market were especially noticed by their absence. Between 10 am and noon, when receiving the offers, the expected protagonist was thus missing: Canal +. The encrypted channel had decided to boycott the case, in accordance with its public position in recent weeks. “The truth is that we are not very excited by this call for tenders, we say on the side of Vivendi. We can sense a real decrease in public interest. We would like everything to be overhauled rather than patched up. ” Since mid-January and an interview with the boss of Canal +, Maxime Saada, in the Figaro, the group asks that the call for tenders of the LFP concern the entire championship. And therefore would like, too, to put his lot back into play, which concerns the remaining 20% of L1 and L2, and which he estimates to overpay at 330 million euros per season.
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Canal + therefore recently contested the call for tenders with the Paris Commercial Court, ruling on the process put in place by the LFP “Anti-competitive” since partial. A hearing has been set for February 19. The group also seized the Autorité de la concurrence last week on the same ground, adding that of“abuse of dominant position”. The channel therefore prefers to force, by legal means, the League to start from scratch, rather than engage in a partial call for tenders.
Another player in sports broadcasting who stood out for his absence on Monday: BeIn Sports. The Qatari channel seems to have definitely sided with Canal + on this issue, the two being linked by an exclusive distribution agreement of the first by the second. Finally, Altice, owner of the RMC Sport chain, has not made an offer either. the team. Without Canal +, BeIn Sports and RMC Sport, the LFP’s call for tenders had no great chance of success. Meanwhile, Ligue 1, which should lose 1.3 billion euros this season, according to the LFP, because of the health crisis and that of TV rights, feverishly patient.
