Paris (AFP)
Mediapro, the new broadcaster of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 football, announced Tuesday that its future channel will be called Telefoot, thanks to an original partnership with the TF1 group, which allows it to use the name of the famous dedicated magazine round ball.
The new channel will start broadcasting in August, when the French football championships resume. The new official calendar, shaken by the coronavirus crisis, provides for a restart of the L1 on August 23, and that of the L2 on August 22.
The Sino-Spanish group Mediapro, which has won the broadcasting rights for more than 80% of the matches of L1 and L2 for the period 2020-2024, has concluded a three-part agreement with the group TF1 to launch its channel, whose l use of the Telefoot brand.
Mediapro will thus be able to capitalize on the notoriety and reputation of the magazine of TF1, a benchmark for football fans.
The magazine, which will remain broadcast on the first channel on Sunday at 11:00 a.m., was launched in 1977, making it one of the longest running PAF shows. It is the first program in France to have been devoted exclusively to football.
Presented by Grégoire Margotton since 2018, the show remains a reference for many fans of the football, even if it has been competing for ten years by the Canal Football Club broadcast on Sunday evening on Canal +.
In addition to the use of the brand, the agreement provides for "an editorial content production partnership": TF1 will supply several magazines to the Téléfoot channel, including a weekly magazine devoted to Ligue 1 news, on Sunday from 12 noon to 1 p.m., "Vintage Telefoot", which will bring viewers back to the great moments of French football, and "Daily Life - Telefoot", a digital version of the magazine.
- Objective: 3 million subscribers -
Finally, the emblematic duo of commentators from the first channel, Grégoire Margotton and Bixente Lizarazu, who notably worked during the 2018 World Cup won by Didier Deschamps' Blues, will officiate on the Mediapro channel for around twenty L1 matches broadcast on Sunday evening, including the "ten most beautiful posters of the season", specify the two groups.
Mediapro thus begins to unveil its device for its launch in France, less than three months before kick-off, after a long wait which had fueled a certain nervousness in the French football community.
According to several club leaders, the Sino-Spanish group will present its detailed program on June 11 to Ligue 1 clubs.
"It is our job to help Mediapro as much as possible to succeed (...). We do not know Mediapro very well, we will get to know them and we hope it will go as well as with BeIN", the current broadcaster with Canal +, said Bernard Caiazzo, president of Premier League, the main union of Ligue 1 clubs, during a video conference on Monday.
The management of Mediapro had also announced at the start of the year that the channel, which will in principle broadcast 24 hours a day and may be accompanied by additional channels, would be accessible via a subscription around 25 euros per month.
Its marketing system (and in particular its potential distribution by telecom operators) has not yet been specified. The channel, which will pay around 800 million euros per year to broadcast Ligue 1 until 2024, has great ambitions, since it aims to recruit 3 million subscribers, a necessary level for that the operation is profitable.
© 2020 AFP