On Saturday, Amazon completed its second season as a broadcaster of Ligue 1. The tone of the Prime Video channel is generally pleasing but perhaps not its editorial choices, in particular the controversial sequences not always filmed.
The 2022-2023 Ligue 1 season ended on Saturday evening, putting clubs, players and also broadcasters to rest. This is the case of Amazon Prime Video, which has completed its second season as broadcaster of 80% of championship matches. Arrived to everyone’s surprise in the summer of 2021, the media brings a new and different look to the historic partner of French football Canal +. This is confirmed by Thibault Le Rol, the star presenter of matches labeled Prime Video. The latter gave an interview to the team where he returns in particular to the editorial choices in terms of production. He clearly assumes the channel’s desire to show the best show possible, even if it means avoiding images that annoy people, especially in the stands.
Amazon must not hide anything, journalistic work obliges
” In our post-Covid society, with its unclear economic and social context, do we want to hear a debate on the role of athletes in politics when we turn on Prime Video to watch tennis, for example? I am very attached to my press card, but I believe more and more that viewers want cool, fun, smiles. (…) Showing images where people are swinging seats, with a child bleeding and someone masturbating in the stands, that is of no interest! It’s not my upbringing. We broadcast 20 seconds of images, then we talk about it… and when the match resumes, we have to get back to the game “, he said in particular in the sports daily.
sorry dear @ThibaultLeRol, you can’t put press card and these words in the same sentence. Either we assume to be in entertainment and there is nothing infamous about it, Or we decide to inform, to decipher and we show the images, even those which anger the LFP and the clubs. https://t.co/cXV3jl5plO
— Florent Gautreau (@FlorentGautreau) June 3, 2023
Words little appreciated by his colleague Florent Gautreau, who challenged him on Twitter to demand more transparency in the name of journalistic ethics. ” Sorry dear Thibault Le Rol, we can’t put press card and these words in the same sentence. Either we assume to be in entertainment and there is nothing infamous about it, Or we decide to inform, to decipher and we show the images, even those which anger the LFP and the clubs he wrote in response to the article. We are tempted to join him but not sure that Amazon agrees. The group wants the best possible image for Ligue 1 in order to make its investment of 663 million euros profitable. It is perhaps this choice that will push the American giant to put its hands in its pocket next November when the Ligue 1 TV rights will be put back on the market.
