Struggle to find TV deal leaves French football clubs fearing bankruptcy - is French football in crisis?

Murder on Zidanes Floor

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When Amazon indicated last year that it would not renew the cut-price deal worth only €250m a season it signed in 2021 after the previous rights holder, Mediapro, pulled out of their €800m deal, Labrune made a bold promise. Yet his prediction that broadcast revenues could top €1bn a season in the new four-year cycle has come back to haunt the 53-year-old former communications executive.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ylian-mbappe-brest-eric-roy-pierre-lees-melou
After months of negotiations during which Canal+ and the Qatar-backed BeIN Sports have turned their backs on French football, there are said to be two offers on the table. The first, from DAZN, is worth almost €400m a season, although Labrune would favour linking up with Warner Bros Discovery’s Max streaming service – a process that could involve Ligue 1 launching an in-house TV channel and that he has estimated would bring up to €600m a season.

Either way, that is a long way short of his predicted figure and way below the deal signed with Mediapro in 2018. Some forecasts suggest that, under the DAZN deal, the winners of next season’s title would receive less than the €6m given in the past season to Clermont, who ended up bottom, with as many as eight clubs thought to be at serious risk of bankruptcy as a result.

It's a farmers league and no one wants to watch it, as demonstrated by no broadcaster pushing hard for the rights. Is it even the fifth best league in Europe?
 
I'd force PSG to invest in the league

Yeah if they want to make it worth watching then PSG should be bringing up the average level considerably with their money. It would also vastly improve their chances of winning the Champions League they desire if they had regular competitive games.
 
They should be proactive on this and bring it in house.

Sack off all broadcasters and bring in their own streaming platform, like the NBA app.

Premier League should have done this years ago. Imagine having 100 million subscribers at £20 per month. That's £24 billion per year baby.
 
I feel like this exact story happened 3 or 4 years ago.
 
Jesus that is scary. The whole business model depends on TV rights. If that’s gone the clubs are fecked.

This applies to most leagues in Europe.

That’s football, or anything really. Value is determined by the scope of the audience. TV rights are just a way of extending that scope to millions more people. We’ve got to be, what, 40+ years removed from top flight football clubs being sustained based on gates and merch turnover? You need people to be interested enough in to product to pay to watch it.
 
They should be proactive on this and bring it in house.

Sack off all broadcasters and bring in their own streaming platform, like the NBA app.

Premier League should have done this years ago. Imagine having 100 million subscribers at £20 per month. That's £24 billion per year baby.
It would be 40 pound per month for people living in UK and Ireland let's not cod ourselves.
 
They should be proactive on this and bring it in house.

Sack off all broadcasters and bring in their own streaming platform, like the NBA app.

Premier League should have done this years ago. Imagine having 100 million subscribers at £20 per month. That's £24 billion per year baby.
Issue is France will have 300,000 subscribers
 
Overseas rights can't be worth much for them at all. Would assume TV rights are very top heavy in that respect.

If you watch your domestic league wherever you're from there's only so much football you can physically watch. England, Germany, Italy and Spain are all more attractive to watch as additional leagues.

Even if you're from a smaller country and reject your own domestic league, that's still 4 countries that most people are probably going to want to tune in to watch first. They're all in relatively close time zones and fixtures clash with France so it's going to be hard to sell.

They did have Messi, Neymar, Mpabbe as novelties to draw people in but they've all gone now.

Leaves just the domestic audience for the most part. France is obviously reasonably large with a decent enough economy on the world scale, but it's probably just going to be limited to that in terms of how much they can bring in with scraps from elsewhere.
 
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Jesus that is scary. The whole business model depends on TV rights. If that’s gone the clubs are fecked.

This applies to most leagues in Europe.

Well the French league was getting £250m per season. The Eredivisie only gets £66m per season and their league has much better historical prestige than the French league.

Maybe the French league will have to adopt a similar business model to the Eredivisie where they are basically a feeder league now and have to continuously create good youth prospects that they sell on for profit.

No one should feel sorry for the league when the Portuguese and Dutch league get far less TV money and have to sell players every year.
 
I wonder if PSG has killed the league off a bit in terms of the interest.

Perhaps others feel differently but I never saw the french teams or french league as iconic in terms of teams in comparison to how I feel about the Milan clubs or Juventus from Serie A, or Barcelona or Madrid from La Liga, or Bayern in the Bundesliga (perhaps that's due to my age). Since PSG came in with the big money it's killed that even further for me as an outside spectator.
 
As long as it's after Greenwood is sold, then what happens happens. Government bowing down to their oil & gas overlords.
 
Could something like this, or bit further with a legit financial ruin possibility, force the French league to seek something drastic like merging with another national league (or two or more)?
 
Could something like this, or bit further with a legit financial ruin possibility, force the French league to seek something drastic like merging with another national league (or two or more)?

It is unfortunate but that's the way it is.

Many other leagues have already suffered drastically due to the couple of big leagues getting all of the interest. They were punished for no reason in the Champions League qualification change. Where so many smaller leagues best teams don't get an automatic CL spot anymore, causing interest in watching the league to fall further because none of their clubs are on the biggest stage anymore. Also stopping clubs from getting a huge income from CL qualification, thus creating an inability to sign top players.

If the French league falls off its just joining a long list of others that no one cares about watching anymore.
 
I am wondering if Qatar is thinking about pulling out of PSG.
The World Cup 2022 is history, in Mbappe they lost their best asset and now their own broadcasting station (beIN) refuses to invest.
 
Always wondered why France which’s a big footballing nation producing plethora of talents and is a prominent country has such a piss poor league compared to PL,la liga, Serie a? You see Spain, Italy, England, Germany, all major countries has major leagues and then you look at France where the domestic league that is ligue 1 just doesn’t match the reputation at all. What’s the reason? Marketing? Structure? Investment?
 
I am wondering if Qatar is thinking about pulling out of PSG.
The World Cup 2022 is history, in Mbappe they lost their best asset and now their own broadcasting station (beIN) refuses to invest.
Yeah, they have nothing left there it feels. Just hope they don’t come to the PL. Spurs could explode if they are taken over. They are riped. The location and infrastructure is already there.
 
Jesus that is scary. The whole business model depends on TV rights. If that’s gone the clubs are fecked.

This applies to most leagues in Europe.

It's a position which should encourage all parties to ensure that the league remains competitive, at least to some degree.
 
In a world where you can stream every match for free anyway and there being a million other streaming platforms, you might struggle to get 300,000 people willing to pay £20 a month just to watch the french league.
 
At the price of £20 per sub, 300,000 subs is £6 billion, which is in the ballpark of the latest premier league TV deal, no?
Not even close...it's only 6 million (if it's £20 a year).

£20 a month is 72m a year with 300k subs.
 
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Well the French league was getting £250m per season. The Eredivisie only gets £66m per season and their league has much better historical prestige than the French league.

Maybe the French league will have to adopt a similar business model to the Eredivisie where they are basically a feeder league now and have to continuously create good youth prospects that they sell on for profit.

No one should feel sorry for the league when the Portuguese and Dutch league get far less TV money and have to sell players every year.

The French league has been like that for about 20 years.
 
What is PL's TV deal? I must have only been looking at the PL's UK deal then.

In the end, the outcome of the auction was fairly conventional. Sky Sports, TNT Sports and the BBC split the live and highlights rights for a combined UK£6.7 billion (US$8.44 billion) over four years between 2025 and 2029

For the French to reach that in a private sub at £20 a month, they'd need 25 million subscribers.
 
Always wondered why France which’s a big footballing nation producing plethora of talents and is a prominent country has such a piss poor league compared to PL,la liga, Serie a? You see Spain, Italy, England, Germany, all major countries has major leagues and then you look at France where the domestic league that is ligue 1 just doesn’t match the reputation at all. What’s the reason? Marketing? Structure? Investment?

Like they should be able to get a decent following in Africa if they tried surely.
 
I actually used to like weekly reports on league's games when I was kid. they had some interesting players then, clubs had cool names and colorful kits that you don't really find these days. Nantes, Monaco and Lyon held their own fairy well in Europe, and the best part, they have 6 or 7 clubs that are very close to each other in terms of titles won. it was never playground for one club, like BL is for Bayern. it kinda reminds me of Brazilian league.

but PSG takeover just killed everything. who's gonna watch it these days?
 
PsG is an another level.
When did the Lyon brake a WR transfer fee? Or pay biggest wages in the world?

PSG promissed to bring glamour to the league, exposure ect... and now when there is no Neymar, Messi, Ibra, Mbabbe, Cavani nobody wants to watch it and Ligue is strugling and few teams are facing bankrupt.

Lets be real if you are not from France you are gona to watch EPL where is every week almost one quality match.
 
I am wondering if Qatar is thinking about pulling out of PSG.
The World Cup 2022 is history, in Mbappe they lost their best asset and now their own broadcasting station (beIN) refuses to invest.
Yes, beIN refusing to invest is a big indicator that the Qatari interest in the league is waning.

For those who think they should create their own streaming platform, I don't think anyone outside France would be willing to pay to watch that league. Sure I'd watch a game here and there if it's included in my Premier League package, but I would never pay to watch just the French League.
 
Always wondered why France which’s a big footballing nation producing plethora of talents and is a prominent country has such a piss poor league compared to PL,la liga, Serie a? You see Spain, Italy, England, Germany, all major countries has major leagues and then you look at France where the domestic league that is ligue 1 just doesn’t match the reputation at all. What’s the reason? Marketing? Structure? Investment?

I think football became the most popular sport there relatively late compared to some other countries. Rugby was the top sport in the south at one point in time, football concentrated in the north. If money was being poured into another sport on a large scale it can impact the development of football I suppose. Just a theory. When I was a kid in the 80s I don't think it was completely settled that football was more popular, or if it was that it was only relatively recently, perhaps in the 60s or 70s.

It wasn't until 92/93 that France won it's first European club trophy. By then the reputations of other leagues would have been well ahead. Always playing catchup.

Might try and dig out some historical attendance data compared to rugby and to other European leagues.
 
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