Paris (AFP)

Canal + intends to remain a must for football fans: after recovering part of the Champions League, the pay TV group will finally remain the broadcaster of Ligue 1, through an agreement negotiated with his rival BeIN Sports.

This is a remarkable revenge for Canal +, which lost a few years ago the broadcasting rights of the French football championship, starting in the 2020 season, to the benefit of its competitors Mediapro and BeIN Sports.

The subsidiary group of Vivendi will finally be able to continue to broadcast part of the competition, thanks to an important agreement about to be concluded with BeIN Sports.

In a joint statement, Canal + and BeIN indicated that they were conducting exclusive discussions for a 5-year distribution and sub-license partnership.

In this context, BeIN Sports will sell to Canal + all rights in the L1 over the period 2020/2024, and will not broadcast itself this French competition.

In detail, these rights will allow Canal + to broadcast two matches per day of L1, including 28 of the 38 best posters of each season, the next season (2020/2021). For its part, the Spanish group Mediapro retains the broadcast rights of the top 10 posters of each season.

The agreement under discussion also provides that Canal + will offer in its offers all BeIN Sports channels and their content. In parallel, Canal + will become, from June 2020, the exclusive distributor of BeIN Sports in France, from all other platforms and operators. This distribution component crowns the good relations already existing between the two groups, since Canal + was already the first distributor in France of BeIN Sports.

In an interview with Le Figaro, the boss of Canal + Maxime Saada said that his group would buy the rights to broadcast the L1 BeIN Sports "at cost price, 330 million euros".

This agreement follows the granting of broadcasting rights in France for the very strategic Champions League, for the period from 2021 to 2024, won by Canal + and BeIN Sports (as well as TF1, which will broadcast the final in clear).

- The pressure rises on Mediapro -

With this twofold twist, Canal + is making a big comeback on the French football rights market, which had become more and more fragmented in recent years for the benefit of new players, such as Mediapro (which won the L1), or RMC Sports (Altice), which had acquired the rights of the Champions League in the previous call for tenders from UEFA.

For Canal + and BeIN Sports, which had tried to unite in 2016, but had been prevented by the French Competition Authority, this new partnership to all a win-win agreement.

Canal + side, it allows the tricolor group to fill its content offering, built on "premium" broadcast rights, around the triptych foot, cinema and series. And this, pragmatically, as he has already done in the series in alliance with the US giant Netflix streaming.

As for BeIN, it allows the Qatari group to focus on its big international competitions, and to recover funds that will allow it to finance its next calls for tenders, while securing its future in France, while the tricolor market was become particularly complicated.

Finally, it clearly puts pressure on the Spanish group with Chinese capital Mediapro, judged by many players responsible for the inflation of sports rights in France.

Faced with the comeback of Canal +, the Iberian group, which has agreed to pay the trifle of 800 million euros per season to broadcast the best matches in Ligue 1, will have to redouble efforts to win subscribers and try to to recover, while his strategy and ability to execute it already raised many questions in the football and audiovisual media.

© 2019 AFP