TV ‍: French football will cry, it prepares the handkerchiefs

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By: Manu Tournoux

French football fantasizes about the future sale of its TV rights, which should reach one billion euros according to Vincent Labrune. A dream called into question by Michel Seydoux.

French football will experience its first fully open call for tenders this fall since the Mediapro fiasco and the Covid crisis. The deal looks complicated knowing that the players are not jostling, that Ligue 1 has been reduced, and that the competitiveness of French football in Europe is more than questionable. Despite this, Vincent Labrune has let it be known that he hopes to achieve the objective of one billion euros in TV rights. For this, the League will certainly have to break up the lots and above all rely on competition between the rights holders.

Except that the reality is not so beautiful. With in particular Canal +, which claimed on all the roofs only after having been obliged to keep Ligue 1 with the old price when Amazon was entitled to a nice reduction, which should not be a candidate for the slightest match. The development of Ligue 1 abroad will be a crucial point to increase the contract of the LFP. There are still a lot of skeptics, even if the club presidents will pray for a battle to take place to grant the rights to Ligue 1. Otherwise it could be grimace soup. This is clearly feared by Michel Seydoux, former boss of LOSC and accustomed to the authorities, in the columns of So Foot.

Seydoux, it’s hard for Labrune

The concern is that I have the feeling that neither Canal, nor BeIN, nor Amazon are making money with Ligue 1, so from there, how do you want to keep them? Me, I think that the French championship tends to be overvalued… Labrune swims very well in a swamp. But a swamp is still a swamp “, explains Michel Seydoux, convinced that the presidents of Ligue 1 will bite their fingers for having put their finger in the gears by accepting the offer of CVC, a financial partner capable of giving cash quickly, but then due the recover from future League revenue.

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