shows everything you need to know about the spaniards. the french needed this euros, yet they mercilessly thrust them out of the completion, probably consigning the french game to history. another reason for neutrals to want england to triumph on sunday.
Struggle to find TV deal leaves French football clubs fearing bankruptcy - is French football in crisis?
- Thread starter Murder on Zidanes Floor
- Start date
Why was none of their clubs ever able to become a European powerhouse anyway?
Not at the same level as Portugal and Holland. The TV deals are so bad that sales are much more dependent.
You were only out by a factor of 1000, nothing majorbloody hell I completely botched my own calculation.
As far as historical success, they didn't often spend on foreign talent to the extent the Italians and Spanish did. Domestic depth not as consistently strong as England or W.Germany to make up for it until roughly the last 30 years. They didn't have any club/s that really pulled away from the pack of reasonably big ones they've had to become a Barca/Real Madrid/Juve/Milan clubs/Liverpool/United/Bayern, until PSG with their dodgy money.
Portugal/Netherlands that have had more trophy success despite smaller countries did so by having most of their talent going to a smaller number of clubs, which means higher chance of a golden generation at one club (60s Benfica, 70s Ajax) but there's no doubt the French have underachieved compared to them. When you look at the number of semi-finals those three leagues have been in historically, France are no worse than them, probably better by now, but they stumbled at semi-final/final stage far more, never really producing any upsets and losing some games they would have been favourites/even in, while the other two have been clinical when they get that far.
The unfortunate truth is that the TV market can only get so big and the PL got the bulk of it, other leagues struggling to raise the value of their deal is nothing new.
I used to watch a fair bit of Ligue 1 when it was free on TV like 7-8 years ago, it’s not a bad league, but even back then while it was offered for free, PL subscription was already a thing in this corner of the world. People are just conveniently blaming PSG, while none of them would watch a match regardless if they weren’t taken over by the Qataris.
I used to watch a fair bit of Ligue 1 when it was free on TV like 7-8 years ago, it’s not a bad league, but even back then while it was offered for free, PL subscription was already a thing in this corner of the world. People are just conveniently blaming PSG, while none of them would watch a match regardless if they weren’t taken over by the Qataris.
So PSG is swimming in money and the rest of the league is facing bancrupcy? That is different from the last few years exactly how?
True, and that is represented in the league usually being above those two over this time, but we've got to a point over the last 15-20 years where all that really matters is are you on the small side of the wealthy (EPL and the small number of biggest clubs outside it, which included QatarPSG), or are you over the wall on the other side.
I was so confused, I triple checked my math.You were only out by a factor of 1000, nothing major
Quoting myself but feck it. I think there's something in this theory. If the French weren't as enthused about their own domestic league when football clubs and leagues were starting to build up overseas reputations you can hardly expect people from other countries to take much note of them either. They've always been behind. Getting closer more recently but the other leagues have been more established for a long time with greater reputations and European competition wins long before France registered their first.
1963/64 average top flight attendances:
Germany 27,568
England 27,027
France 9,612
Italy ??
Spain ??
1973/74
England 28,205
Germany 22,203
France 10,338
Italy ???
Spain ??
1983/84
Germany 20,723
England 18,851
France 10,117
Italy ???
Spain ???
1993/94
Italy 29,590
Germany 27,183
England 23,035
France 12,424
Spain ???
2003/04
Germany 37,395
England 34,993
Spain 29,653
Italy 25,796
France 20,048
2013/14
Germany 43,498
England 36,631
Spain 26,483
Italy 23,385
France 20,965
2023/24
Germany 39,490
England 39,584
Italy 30,867
Spain 29,012
France 26,905
It's a very good question. Look at Germany for example. Attendances are huge for domestic games even though 9 out of 10 times bayern win the league. In Europe only Bayern and Dortmund can compete. Why is that? Why is french football so different? PSG are the Bayern of France, so why does France struggle so much?
Danger for french league is that it ends up going the way of russian/scottish league and ends up being absolute dross.
Theoretically if Lyon and Marseille had multi billionaire owners and it became a proper three horse race for the title would french football become more competitive?
Yes and no, domestically it would improve, who doesnt like a title race? But in terms of CL qualification spots unless all three teams were given CL spots, the two who missed out would struggle in the longer term against the french team who won the league and the cycle would continue. So we would be back to square one.
So who knows what the answer is. Maybe the European competitions need to be fairer in terms of number of enteraints for each competition. Having the the top 3 in France qualify for champions league would help bring more competition for PSG in the longer run. But who then misses out from other countries?
Seeing as the CL is being bloated into a league anyway, why not go the full way and split it into two leagues (northern Europe and southern Europe) of 32 teams each. The top 16 from both leagues qualifying for knockouts for each league and then the winners of those knockout competitions playing the CL final against each other i.e. winner of northern and southern European leagues? Basically copy the model of the NFL.
However you carve it up, the redistribution of wealth from CL needs to change for domestic league such as France not be beaten left behind.
I live in France and rarely watch any Ligue 1 matches. Maybe 2 or 3 a year.
Live in an area where rugby union is more popular. Nearest Ligue 1 club is Toulouse (250km away). Second nearest is St. Etienne (350km away).
Live in an area where rugby union is more popular. Nearest Ligue 1 club is Toulouse (250km away). Second nearest is St. Etienne (350km away).
Presumably there are French people that like watching it. Ultimately that's all that matters. By every metric I've seen Ligue 1 is comfortably the most popular football league in France. People often bemoan modern football but what else do you really need aside from a league to call your own?
Ligue 1 is the most important sporting property in France. It's not so much that the broadcasters aren't pushing hard for the rights, but in austere times they are not prepared to pay what the league demands, but rather what they think it's worth.
I think it would shock many to learn that there aren't 100 million people willing to fork out any money, let alone that amount, to watch PL football. Nowhere near it. You'd be lucky if there are 20 million people who regularly watch PL to justify paying a monthly fee for a service.
Even entertaining it as a thought experiment, the average Thai is not paying £20 a month, so to get anywhere near that figure, you'd have to price-gouge your wealthiest audience, which means that the Thais would be paying very little for it, and the British, Americans, Scandinavians, Singaporeans et all would be paying an arm and a leg to make up for cheap prices elsewhere.
There are millions of people that have an interest in Ligue 1 in France. The interest isn't the issue. The issue is the impasse over what the league wants (too much to provide value) and what a broadcaster is willing to pay, with the league seemingly unwilling to meet anyone half-way.
It would have more than 300,000 subscribers. There were ~450,000 match-going attendees in Ligue 1 last season, so that's a baseline, as that's your hardcore audience. I've seen TV ratings for big fixtures in France on pay-TV in the past hit over 3 million.
If you were to take a conservative stab, Ligue 1 should be able to shift anywhere between 500,000-1,500,000 subscriptions. Where it falls on that scale is up for debate, but even at the lowest end it's enough to sustain a business model that satisfies both broadcaster and league.
Overseas rights are irrelevant for 99% of football leagues. They don't even move the needle for the PL's biggest competitors like La Liga.
Every league, first and foremost, needs the attention of the locals. On that front, France doesn't have a problem. Ligue 1 is comfortably the most popular football (and sports) league domestically.
They have a large enough market to sustain a professional football league that caters to that audience.
Ligue 1 would be in much worse shape if PSG's Qatar takeover never took place. The other clubs are not suffering in terms of interest. Attendances are not in freefall.
The problem is that a very generous TV rights deal from a bygone era of free money is starting to reflect its true value, and Ligue 1 officials are unwilling to accept this.
Ligue 1 isn't going to fall apart, nor would it benefit from merging with Belgian or Swiss leagues (something that would be rejected by clubs in those leagues anyway). It has a loyal customer base of anywhere between 500,000 and 1.5m. That's more than enough to run a professional sports league.
What's happening now is that expectations are being reset across the board. It's like going from a salary of $150,000 to $50,000. No one wants to accept that, so they convince themselves that they provide more value than they do.
Ligue 1 simply needs to come to terms with the fact that its earlier TV deals were, for any number of reasons, vastly inflated. DAZN's offer of 400m is far more in line with true value than the deflated figure they're getting now (250m) or the overinflated figure Ligue 1 wants (1 billion).
The French care about watching it. None of this has anything to do with whether a Russian or Indonesian prefers to watch the Premier League or Ligue 1.
Nor can Ligue 1 fall off considering it's not perched atop anywhere. It's been a selling league whose clubs, PSG aside, struggle at the top table in Europe. Having less money to spend on wages and transfers is not going to change things drastically. The French are still first-class at producing talent, so its clubs are far better prepared to remain competitive over most European leagues even with less money.
The UCL is being turned into a bonafide league before our eyes. The expanded quadrennial Club World Cup is coming, and who knows what (or how frequent) it will become in a few decades' time.
Qatar didn't invest in PSG so it could win matches against Metz. They know where the wind is blowing. Domestic leagues will become a secondary concern for any elite club within our lifetimes. For the likes of PSG, that's already the case. It will take much longer for this reality to hit English fans, but it's inevitable.
Qatar has an interest in making PSG the greatest club in the world. It has much less interest in making Ligue 1 the best league in the world. That's the difference, and it's why they're not going anywhere.
Ligue 1 is significantly more popular than Top 14 (rugby) in France. Just about any metric you care to bring up will back this, and it's not close. Rugby is very popular in the south, but even then football has well-supported clubs in most of the major cities in the south (Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nice). In the case of Marseille, Lyon and Nice in particular, the football clubs are by far the most popular in the city. Ditto Bordeaux, but that's recently shifted with the success of the rugby team and the malaise of Girondins in the lower leagues.
This is a nice post but a lot of it speculation and guesswork. The market will dictate and set the price, the price is power because there isn't the market to create a return.
The rest of the post was erudite and well reasoned.
Absolutely football is more popular than rugby, (at least as far as I'm aware). Was it closer in the past or behind at some point if you go back long enough?
We were trying to work out what stunted the growth of the French league in terms of reputation, European competition success etc. compared to England, Germany, Italy and Spain in the comment I replied to.
It's certainly true that French people were not attending football matches in the same numbers that they were elsewhere going off the attendance figures I posted later on. Goes without saying really, more money coming into a club from ticket sales means more money spent on players, training facilities, medical etc. This income stream was particularly important for football clubs before satellite/cable tv became a thing.
English, German, Italian and Spanish teams had already secured continental and worldwide reputations before French people started to attend games in greater numbers and that gap must be hard to bridge. Not just clubs from those countries, but Ajax, Benfica and others already had great reputations as well.
The question remained as to why the French only had 12,000 fans at the average Ligue 1 game well into the 90s. That wasn't many people for such a large country. Historic competition from other sports like rugby seemed like a possible answer, but maybe French people just didn't care as much about football for other reasons?
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Just have to adjust to what the French people want to pay, as pointed out, the bulk of the money to a league anywhere comes from the country's fans, any deals outside is a bonus and difficult to achieve.
Good thing is the attendances are up and looks more healthy than a few decades ago.
Good thing is the attendances are up and looks more healthy than a few decades ago.
Clubs shouldn't fear bankruptcy, it's what's needed for the to face economic reality. That is they need to spend within the limit of their income. Probably have to restructure but how else can they do?
As posted above. The 400m offer is at a value where DAZN can operate in a commercially viable way.
What this should serve as, is a warning to other leagues, younger audiences are in to gaming and other things. The model of aways growing TV right income can end...
As posted above. The 400m offer is at a value where DAZN can operate in a commercially viable way.
What this should serve as, is a warning to other leagues, younger audiences are in to gaming and other things. The model of aways growing TV right income can end...
What that league needs is Marcus Rashford
Can see why most teams would be going bankrupt with the price of fertilisers increasing, it's a shame
You're missing a couple of zeros there maybe. Its 6M not 6B.
Why? The same shit is going on in the PL they still charge a fair few bucks for the TV rights.
£6million bro
You had more interesting games in PL. Just look at the schedule, there is always top game between top6 teams.
And city won at least 3 titles bec of pep. When he feck off, it would be more level playground.
The French and French football as a whole badly need a tactical revolution. Very few of their sides are genuinely good to watch, even PSG have been over reliant on Mbappe to make any real waves.
It always struck me as odd how french football doesn't have a bigger domestic market to be honest. Bigger population and economy than Italy or Spain, football mad, what gives?
If those rumoured prices of 30/40€ are true then the package is dead on arrival and clubs should get ready for more losses in the coming seasons.
The league is going to get raided, firesale of any talent to stay afloat.
The league is going to get raided, firesale of any talent to stay afloat.
Plus lots of (ex colonies) countries speaking the language.
DAZN and beIN Sports acquire Ligue 1 TV rights
DAZN and beIN Sports acquire Ligue 1 TV rights - Yahoo Sports
DAZN and beIN Sports acquire Ligue 1 TV rights - Yahoo Sports