Football: Canal + "does not refrain" from formulating an offer for the TV rights of Ligue 1

Cédric Chasseur and Romain Rouillard / Photo credit: DAMIEN MEYER / AFP 07:00, September 12, 2023

On which channel (or platform) will we watch Ligue 1 from the 2024-2025 season? It is impossible for the moment to answer this question, insofar as the LFP, the Professional Football League, puts into play the broadcasting rights of the France football championship for the period from 2024 to 2029. The call for tenders will be officially launched this Tuesday afternoon.

And the governing body of French football wants to think big. Its president, Vincent Labrune, hopes, indeed, to reach the billion euros, as he announced in an interview with L'Équipe last June. The LFP will offer this time two lots and not seven as before. In detail, the premium package will include the three best posters of each championship day as well as the digital rights (match summaries, quasi-live extracts, etc.).

All European Cups on Canal + next season

As for the second batch, it will include the other six matches of each day. For now, Amazon and Canal + share the gift. The American platform broadcasts seven matches per day, including the Sunday evening poster, while the encrypted channel offers two: Saturday night (21pm) and Sunday afternoon (17pm).

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And despite a period of strong tensions between the LFP and Canal +, the idea of seeing the channel, historical partner of French football, continue the adventure of Ligue 1, is no longer a utopia. "We do not refrain from making an offer," slips even an internal source to Europe 1. The encrypted channel will also broadcast, exclusively from next season, all European Cups (Champions League, Europa League and Europa League Conference) for the sum of 480 million euros per season. And in the event that no proposal can satisfy the LFP, which would record the failure of the call for tenders, the body could decide to discuss by mutual agreement with the market players.

The failure of Mediapro

As a reminder, at the dawn of the 2020-2021 season, the LFP thought it had won the jackpot by entrusting the TV rights of Ligue 1 to the Sino-Spanish group Mediapro, for 830 million euros per year until 2024. But the broadcaster, which had acquired 80% of the rights to the France championship, and which broadcast the matches through its Téléfoot channel, found itself unable to provide such funding, thus forcing the LFP to launch a new call for tenders. Amazon had then positioned itself. For the time being, no one knows if the American giant intends to repile.