Paris (AFP)
The rescue of French football will again go through justice: Canal +, favorite for the reassignment of Ligue 1 TV rights, challenged the market consultation launched by the Professional Football League (LFP) before the Paris Commercial Court on Monday.
The former historic broadcaster retaliates.
According to a source with knowledge of the case, Canal + considers this market consultation "anti-competitive" and "discriminatory" and wants to see it invalidated by the courts, making the days to come even more uncertain, against a background of financial emergency for professional clubs, undermined by the health crisis and that of TV rights.
The situation results from an opposition between the League and Canal + in the legal analysis of this file.
The encrypted channel estimates that the TV rights of Ligue 1 must be put back into competition globally, via a call for tenders including the matches it currently broadcasts (20% of Ligue 1 for 330 million euros per year ).
But the LFP, for whom these 330 M EUR annually represent the main television windfall, thinks that it is not forced to do so, and has opened a "market consultation" to reallocate only the matches abandoned by its broadcaster Mediapro, which has negotiated its withdrawal from the market in December.
In theory, the offers are expected on Monday, February 1 in the morning, with the hope of being able to have one or more new broadcasters from February 5 for 80% of the Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 matches, left vacant by the group. Sino-Spanish, unable this fall to honor the annual 800 million euros he had initially promised.
But the schedule risks being turned upside down: a hearing is indeed scheduled for February 19 at the Paris Commercial Court, two weeks after the outcome of this revised call for tenders, which could therefore be invalidated a posteriori ...
- "Overvalued" matches?
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Neither the LFP nor Canal + had reacted in the early evening to this announcement.
But the channel of Vincent Bolloré's group has already put forward its arguments in the press in recent weeks: it believes it has "overvalued" the value of this lot in the context of the 2018 call for tenders, marked by the explosion of auction following Mediapro bids.
The file is all the more thorny legally since Canal + is not directly linked to the Professional Football League: the channel only broadcasts Ligue 1 thanks to a sub-license agreement signed with beIN Sports, its partner, which no did not wish to react on Monday.
According to a source with knowledge of the case, the Qatari group, also broadcaster of a few Ligue 2 matches, nevertheless shares the legal analysis of Canal + and will side with its partner in this affair.
This makes the market consultation of February 1 even more uncertain, in a sector of sports TV rights in sharp decline.
Canal +, the only channel to have publicly expressed its interest in buying the meetings so far, will it submit an offer despite its assignment?
- OM-PSG on which channel?
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Faced with legal uncertainty, will potential new entrants (Amazon? The DAZN streaming platform?) Come out of the woods?
The hypothesis of an unsuccessful call for tenders, if the reserve prices set by the League were not reached for example, is mentioned by several observers.
This would force the League to reopen over-the-counter negotiations with potential buyers, an option initially considered but to which Canal + was not favorable.
Above all, this would oblige the LFP to urgently act a transitional broadcasting process for its vacant matches, and thus avoid the disastrous hypothesis of the "black screen", matches not broadcast, while the "Classic" Marseille- PSG of the French Championship is scheduled for February 7.
For the time being, Téléfoot, the Mediapro channel, should not continue broadcasting the meetings until January 31 at the latest, even if it has said it is ready to go further.
Apart from the Téléfoot option, other alternatives are available to the League: Canal + has offered a "pay per view" retransmission, and several free channels have expressed interest in broadcasting matches without counterpart (TF1, M6, France Télévisions).
One thing is certain: the initial record windfall of 1.217 billion euros per year (L1 and L2 combined) obtained during the call for tenders in 2018 is only a distant mirage.
© 2021 AFP