The deal
French soccer’s top-flight Ligue 1 finally found two domestic broadcasters for the next five years this week when DAZN, the international streaming service, and French-Qatari pay-TV giant BeIN picked up the TV rights to the competition after a months-long search by the LFP governing body.
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The move ensures that Ligue 1 will have domestic TV coverage for the 2024-25 season through to the end of the 2028-29 campaign – with less than a month to go until the start of 2024-25.
As many as eight Ligue 1 clubs were reported to be at risk of bankruptcy this month amid fears that a TV deal would not be reached.
Now, although a deal has been struck, not everyone is happy with the sharp decline in rights value at a time when French soccer is already financially imperiled, while questions have also been raised with the choice of broadcasters.
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By GlobalDataLigue 1 is traditionally one of the top five most high-profile and commercially powerful leagues in European soccer, and by extension global soccer, but in recent years organizational and financial mismanagement, domination by a single club (Paris Saint-Germain), and waning star power have seen it lag behind the top-tier competitions in England, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
This has been exacerbated of late by the LFP’s repeated failed attempts to strike a deal that it felt could help the league to compete with its richer competition.
Without a strong media rights deal, French clubs have less financial power to compete with Europe’s other major leagues, a situation best signified by the fact that no French side has won one of UEFA’s three top pan-continental club competitions since 1992.
Back in 2018, the LFP agreed a lucrative €3.3 billion deal with Spanish agency Mediapro to show matches from the 2020-21 season through the end of the 2023-24 season (which ended in May). That deal, however, collapsed in 2020 almost immediately after it began, with Mediapro hitting significant financial difficulties and failing to attract adequate subscription numbers, plunging French soccer into a crippling financial crisis.
Following on from that, e-commerce giant Amazon’s Prime Video service stepped in to pick up the pieces, purchasing a cut-price slate of rights that angered other broadcasters, primarily national network Canal Plus, that believed they were now overpaying for the rights.
In the fallout, Canal Plus recused itself from bidding for the 2024-29 slate of Ligue 1 rights, while Amazon elected to move away from soccer rights ownership once the deal concluded, leaving only DAZN and BeIN left to bid for an increasingly unattractive rights prospect.
Despite this, when tendering the latest set of domestic TV rights last September the LFP stated its intention to ask for as much as €840 million per year from the packages – more than what Mediapro was set to pay – and setting a reserve price for bids of €530 million and €270 million per season, respectively, for the two packages.
Unsurprisingly, the LFP did not receive any bids that reached its asking price and extended the tender further in October. The stubbornness of the governing body did not abate and only now, with the league less than a month away, has the LFP accepted the cut-price bids from DAZN and BeIN, ending the rights saga but only after suffering significant sel-inflicted reputational damage over the last six months.
Conrad Wiacek, head of analysis and consulting at Sportcal (GlobalData Sport), explained: "The Ligue 1 rights deal, a reported $500m through to 2029, highlights an embarrassing fall from grace for French league soccer.
“When going to market, the stated aim was to negotiate a deal worth at least $1bn for media rights to French soccer.
“However, following the collapse of the Mediapro deal and the unwillingness of the LFP to renegotiate its deal with Canal+ following the shortened Covid season, the LFP has essentially backed itself into a corner by alienating most of its media partners.
“With the likes of Amazon unwilling to come to the rescue of French football given its change in strategy, along with the departure of a host of stars such as Kylian Mbappe and Neymar, the need for the LFP to strike a deal ahead of the new season from a position of weakness means that the body has had to settle for a fee well below its stated target price."
The details
DAZN will pay €400 million ($436.4 million) per season for the bigger of the two rights packages that the LFP tendered, one that will see it broadcast eight out of the nine games in each round of the 18-team league.
BeIN meanwhile acquired the secondary package for €100 million per year and will show the most high-profile fixture of each round, or the second biggest game every other round.
According to L’Equipe, the LFP is also negotiating a potential exit clause after two or three seasons, which BeIN is understood to be open to.
The presidents of Ligue 1 voted in favor of the split broadcast deal as opposed to the prospect of a direct-to-consumer Ligue 1 platform which was also mooted (and was wheeled out as an option whenever rights talks hit the buffers).
Ligue 1’s board of directors have now approved the deal – but some involved with the league, such as Lyon owner John Textor, have slated the agreement.
Textor released a statement prior to the meeting, confirming the broadcasters calling for the creation of a Ligue 1 channel, saying: “Signing a long-term deal with traditional broadcasting models is looking towards the past, we should be turning to the future.”
The US businessman, who controls a portfolio of other soccer clubs worldwide as well as Lyon, had some stronger words on social media where he commented on the link between BeIN Sports and perennial Ligue 1 winners Paris Saint-Germain, both owned by Qatar Sports Investments.
In an Instagram post which has subsequently been deleted, Textor said: “Congratulations to BeIN Sports! The PSG Network has once again secured the right to run PSG promotions over OL [Lyon] games.”
