The LFP has reached an agreement with Canal + to broadcast the end of the 2020-2021 season of Ligue 1. -

Mathieu Pattier / SIPA

  • Canal + and the LFP have reached an agreement for the broadcasting of all Ligue 1 matches on the encrypted channel until the end of the season.

  • The historic championship broadcaster collects all the prizes from Mediapro for only 35 million additional euros.

  • The League will rebuild a call for tenders for the 2021 to 2024 seasons, hoping for the participation of new players, such as Amazon, who have come forward this week.

A press release that we no longer hoped for.

Thursday at the very end of the afternoon, at the end of an extraordinary board of directors announced to the media that same morning, the Professional Football League (LFP) announced that it had reached a global agreement with Canal + for the broadcast of Ligue 1 until the end of the season.

More than four months after the defection of the Sino-Spanish dream seller Mediapro, French football is finally breathing (a little) better.

The historic broadcaster of the French championship will have each day "exclusive audiovisual rights, live and in full, of all Ligue 1 Uber Eats matches and eight of the ten Ligue 2 BKT matches," according to the press release. the LFP.

Canal changed posture in 24 hours

This announcement is surprisingly, even if the urgency of the situation and the financial distress of the LFP and, with it, of all French professional clubs, partly explains this express turnaround.

Because until Thursday, 6 p.m., there was absolutely no question on the side of the encrypted channel to cede anything to an LFP which, according to it, pushed it out of the game in 2018 to go look for Mediapro and his famous billion.

Thus, after having quite simply zapped the call for tenders launched by the League in January, Canal + and its big boss Vincent Bolloré had also put a stop to the instance by also refusing to negotiate by mutual agreement.

But his position changed in less than 24 hours.

After having already taken a step by offering the broadcast of the OM-PSG Classic on Sunday against a check of around three million euros, Vincent Bolloré's channel has managed to repatriate all the prizes gleaned by Mediapro in 2018 at home. Ligue 1 matches from the 25th day (that of next weekend), will therefore be broadcast on Canal + pending a new call for tenders from the League by the end of the season.

This agreement also marks the end of the Téléfoot channel, which should stop broadcasting soon after Classico which it co-broadcasts with Canal on Sunday.

French clubs lose half of their stake

The numbers now.

Canal +, which until then refused to continue to pay its bills for lot 3 (including the Saturday evening match and that of Sunday at 5 p.m.) finally agreed to keep this deal in place (for a total of 168 million until the end of the season), while including a small extension of 35 million to recover the matches of Mediapro, a total of 203 million euros.

On arrival, according to

several sources close to the case questioned by AFP, with what the League has already received from Mediapro and what it will continue to touch with Free, we arrive at a total of 589 million euros in the coffers of the League for the 2020-2021 season, down 49% from the 1.153 billion forecast in the 2018 call for tenders.

However, Thursday's agreement only runs until the end of the season: it will then be necessary to renegotiate the marketing of the rights for the next seasons, with the various operators concerned.

This period of time is welcome for the LFP which, after watching closely the interest of Amazon (which positioned itself during the last call for tenders), will have a little time ahead of it. to build a new call for tenders more suited to the arrival of these new players on the market, and hope to find a sum more in line with its ambitions.

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  • Mediapro

  • Television

  • Sport

  • League 1

  • Soccer

  • TV rights

  • Canal Plus