- Football has stopped because of the coronavirus pandemic.
- French clubs pray for reason to come to an end.
- TV rights, wages worry officials
Small arrangements between TV rights holders to broadcast Ligue 1. Unlimited salary increases, a transfer market that takes Mondo Duplantis to break new records every four mornings. It was barely months, weeks ago. Football was hovering. Indestructible machine, it was said, that an adorable pangolin came to stop, causing "a meteorite" to fall on the king sport, to use the expression of the new Rennes president Nicolas Holveck, in L'Equipe .
"The goal is to stay alive, and all together." Sounded by the interruption of competitions until further notice, will professional football recover unscathed from the coronavirus pandemic? In Spain, the federation has released 500 million euros to help clubs in the first and second divisions. In Germany, the time is for catastrophism. "If we do not play behind closed doors as soon as possible, it is no longer worth asking whether we are making a championship with 18 or 20 clubs, because we will not even have 20 professional clubs any more," warns the boss of the German League, Christian Seifert.
End the season and get TV rights, at all costs
Let's stay in France, because in any case, the problem is the same everywhere: that the longer this unexpected break, the more damage it will cause. Bernard Caïazzo, president of ASSE and of the L1 clubs union: “If we stay two months without playing, we can rectify the situation. If it's four months, but we finish our domestic and European competitions, the clubs can get away with it provided that the next season ends on time. In the event that all these "ifs" do not hold up, the situation would quickly become unbearable for the clubs, unable to lean on a powerful shareholder like PSG, OM or Nice. No match, no ticket office. No ticket office, no revenue. Without forgetting the sponsorship income and especially the TV rights which will be reduced if the season is too. This is where the main concern of club presidents lies.
“The economic loss due to the non-payment of TV rights would be very strong, confirms to us the general manager of FC Lorient, Fabrice Bocquet. We prepare our budgets based on revenue from TV rights and if on arrival we touch only 75%, it has a very strong impact on the budget, knowing that the charges do not really decrease. This is why Caïazzo wants to finish the championship in July-August, even if it means starting the next one in stride. “Finishing the season would avoid having claims for reimbursement of TV rights. This is a major issue, adds Christophe Lepetit, responsible for economic studies at the CDES. The clubs want to prevent Canal + and beIN from turning to the LFP by saying `` you sold me 380 Ligue 1 games, 380 Ligue 2 games, plus the play-offs and in fact you did not respect your contract and you owe us so many millions of euros '' ”. Not going to the end of 2019-2020, would amount to 400-500 million euros of losses for French football, estimates Holveck. "Unthinkable. At the end of the chain, it is not only the club economy but also the core of the pro football ecosystem - the transfer market - which would bear the brunt of the consequences of this shortfall. Bocquet:
“Some clubs are supposed to receive money from other clubs. However, if we have clubs in economic difficulty which cannot honor their debts, it will put in difficulty the clubs awaiting liquidity. Sales being a very important source of income for French clubs, we can therefore worry about the likely fall in the transfer market. "
The (all relative) boost of partial unemployment
Remain to evacuate the salary question, this big ball in period of inactivity, all sectors combined. Faced with the economic slowdown linked to the coronavirus, the government has extended the principle of partial unemployment to all sectors of activity, with a more generous allowance. “On March 13, exposes Le Mans president Thierry Gomez, not knowing how it would develop, we put the pro group on paid leave and the rest of the staff on partial unemployment. But given the evolution, everyone has gone to partial unemployment since Monday March 24. In Ligue 1, OM and OL have rushed in, as have Nice, Reims and Montpellier. Concretely, the club compensates its players, its secretaries, its physiotherapists or its gardeners at 70% of their gross remuneration (around 84% net). Then the State reimburses him, up to a limit of 4,850 euros per employee, according to a decree whose publication is expected this week.
Interesting for club staff, paltry for Ligue 1 and even Ligue 2 players, where the average salary is "closer to 10-12,000 euros than 5,000 euros," recalls Thierry Gomez. Christophe Lepetit confirms: “The mechanisms put in place, in particular short-time working, are not very suitable responses to the world of football and the high incomes of footballers. On the other hand, we are on levels of remuneration which are much lower in Ligue 2. Despite everything, even at 10,000 euros, the coverage by partial unemployment up to 4.5 smics does not really respond to the whole financial problem that is posed. This will be more beneficial to smaller clubs. "
Fulvio Luzi, boss of FC Chambly, abounds in this sense: “It will obviously do us good, not to mention the exemption from the employer and salary charges that go with it. Doing good is not healing, so consider going further. Until wages drop? Listening to Nicolas Holveck's speech would not be anything utopian.
“The players have to understand that the situation is very difficult. I had very good discussions with ours, it was very constructive. We talk about partial unemployment but the situation is so serious that if clubs die, we will talk about unemployment. We have to sit around a table and adopt common measures because the 20 clubs must survive. We will not do a Championship of five or ten. "
Saving an essentially competitive and individualistic environment through collective play is also what the head of economic studies at CDES believes. "We will have to see in which legal and social framework [the salary negotiations] take place because there are contracts which are signed with the players and I do not think that they have this type of clause in it. We will therefore be in negotiations. This is where we must hope that collective intelligence will have its effect, by putting everyone around the table, in particular the players' unions (UNFP, Fifpro). The goal is to say "we all realize that there is a big problem, let's make sure to limit the damage all together" ".
According to the latest information, the bosses of the pro clubs have gathered around Didier Quillot, Executive Director General of the LFP, to address the issue of calendar organization and think about a survival plan for French football. A next "office" is expected on Friday. It will take at least that to stay alive.
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