After the withdrawal of the broadcaster Mediapro, the Canal + channel seemed the most able to recover the TV rights of Ligue 1. In an interview with "Figaro", the boss of the channel nevertheless said he wanted to go through a new call for tenders global.
This maneuver should in particular make it possible to renegotiate the rights downwards.
Canal +, favorite to take over the TV rights of the French Football Championships, put pressure on the Professional Football League (LFP) on Tuesday by asking for the organization of a new call for tenders for all League matches 1. Believing that "Ligue 1 has lost a lot of value" with the Covid-19 crisis and the withdrawal of the major broadcaster Mediapro, its boss, Maxime Saada, announced in an interview with
Le Figaro
, that the encrypted channel was going to restore to the LFP its share of matches, wishing to see all the matches put back on sale via a new call for tenders.
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Ligue 1 overvalued?
"We finally came to the conclusion on the Canal + side that it was in the interest of all stakeholders to go through a call for tenders," Maxime Saada said on a daily basis, while according to several sources familiar with the matter, the League favored a reallocation via a mutual agreement agreement between the two parties.
In the pages of
Figaro
, the boss of Canal + suggests that this solution would present several problems, starting with the perpetuation of an overvaluation of the rights of Ligue 1. Maxime Saada has always suggested that Ligue 1 was overvalued and had declared in October that his channel would refuse to "reinvest at a loss in football".
He adds that legal questions arise without a prior call for tenders, and that the relationship of trust between the leaders of French football and Canal + is on the wane: "We have not been treated properly in recent years. "
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Negotiated withdrawal of Mediapro
Canal + currently broadcasts 20% of Ligue 1 matches, via a sub-license signed with beIN Sports for an annual amount of 330 million euros.
The remaining 80% are still broadcast on Téléfoot, the channel of the Sino-Spanish group Mediapro, even though the latter negotiated its withdrawal with the League in December.
Initially, the contract for the broadcasting of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 for the 2020-24 cycle had broken records, reaching the annual amount of 1.217 billion euros, of which more than 800 million for the Mediapro group alone, new came to the French market.
But since September, Mediapro wanted to renegotiate its contract downwards and ended up agreeing to withdraw from the market in return for compensation of 100 million euros.