A damning governmental report into the top two tiers of French men’s soccer has - amongst other recommendations - advocated for a single domestic broadcaster to show Ligue 1 action in future.
Selling domestic rights to the top soccer division to only one partner is one of the 30-plus recommendations handed down by the report, which was commissioned as part of an overall investigation into the creation of the LFP Media joint venture (that vehicle features an investment from private equity heavyweights CVC, and is in charge of commercializing the French league).
The French Senate’s Culture Committee - which in the report has described the LFP overall as potentially suffering from “deep dysfunctions” - launched the investigation in April.
Currently, global streaming heavyweight DAZN and pay-TV’s BeIN Sports cover Ligue 1 domestically, through deals across the 2024-29 cycle. The agreements are worth around $550 million each campaign (with DAZN paying the vast majority). However, they were only struck following a painfully long process which was resolved a few weeks before the 2024-25 campaign began.
Now, the 130-page report - authored by senators Laurent Lafon and Michel Savin - calls for the LFP to “rethink the regulation of calls for tenders” by allowing rights to potentially be sold to a “single broadcaster.”
The proliferation of broadcasters who hold live soccer rights in France is regularly criticized by fans, and the report has also posited that splitting up the rights in this way also leads to a greater risk of digital piracy, with fans tempted to simply stream games illegally instead.
Lafon and Savin, following the report’s publication, told media: “Mistakes have been made and no lessons have been learned. They continue, and we see this with the most recent allocation of the broadcast rights. These mistakes put clubs in a very delicate position.”
Turning to the overall deal with CVC, struck in 2022 and which gave CVC 13% of French soccer’s future commercial rights revenue in exchange for a capital injection of €1.5 billion ($1.62 billion), the report’s authors were also severe.
Savin said: “The prospect of the rapid distribution of funds to the clubs took precedence over all other considerations,” adding that "the long-term usefulness of the operation with CVC remains to be demonstrated for the clubs.”
Lafon also commented, on the process through which the CVC deal was struck: “Decisions with serious consequences were taken, often in haste, with a biased presentation of data and different possible scenarios, sometimes with a desire to prevent contradictory points of view or to fail to transmit information essential to understanding the issues.”
At the time it was pushed through, French soccer was reeling from the collapse of the previous major domestic Ligue 1 rights deal - struck in 2020, with Mediapro - which left some clubs on the edge of bankruptcy.
However, the report believes that further separation between the LFP and the LFP Media subsidiary needs to be achieved.
It says there needs to be a “clear distinction between the activities of professional leagues and those of their commercial companies by clearly separating the league from its subsidiary."
Other topics that the report covered included how to combat the threat of digital piracy, with the report recommending the “real-time processing of IP addresses to be blocked.”
The salary of the LFP’s president, Vincent Labrune, also came into question - the report has advocated for a future cap on his salary, which since the CVC deal has been €1.2 million.
Lafon and Savin have said they would like to “establish a ceiling on the remuneration of presidents of professional leagues, similar to that existing for public companies.”
Labrune, formerly the president of Ligue 1 giants Olympique de Marseille, was re-elected to serve another four-year term in September.
Labrune was first elected LFP president in September 2020, replacing Nathalie Boy de la Tour.
