@Liu Kang whats up with this Ligue 1 TV contract situation? I saw they about to get less than they got 20 years ago with Canal telling them to eff themselves.
It's a mess like many things in the country right now. I don't know all the specifics but overall it's full of arrogance and ego and it goes like this
Ligue 1 has steadily gotten higher rights (they are split into lots to maximize value) over the years and the historical broadcaster was Canal+. They greatly helped building the brand when it was still called Division 1. But for the past 15 years or so, they've been at odds while still being partners.
Ligue 1 always wanted more and Canal+ always low balled them. Ligue 1 always had this dream of getting 1B/year. In 2014, when Bein Sports launched, they thought they could but Hollande intervened to split the rights with Canal+ which ended up being around 750M/year.
Since 2018 though, it's broken because that's when Mediapro bought 80% of the rights for 2020-2024 for 820M ! And 20% remaining (better matches) for Bein/Canal+ was 330M and that totaled at 1.15B/year. Canal+ at the time valued the whole thing at 800M and that price was already overvalued.
However Mediapro was a shaky entity (not even a broadcaster, just a broker) which already failed in Italy and at that time, Saada (head of Canal+) had a famous interview where he ran the numbers live to say that was unsustainable and Mediapro would fail in 2 years.
He and most people who had look at them were right as Mediapro failed right at the time Covid hit. So at that time (2021) Canal+ told them to redo a tender and we can save you but at the actual value of around 600M/year for the whole domestic rights.
Then Amazon made an offer of 200M for Mediapro's part (down from 800 lol) and to spite Canal+, Ligue 1 accepted. Canal+ had keep that remaining 20% at the original inflated price they agreed. They sued but lost. There was also a remaining 50 for another broadcaster but the total was 600M then as well.
So in 2023, the Ligue still dreamed of the billy though hoped for 800M and launched their tender with that in mind even though the actual value was probably around 650M. And that was while tv rights for every other leagues decreased a lot.
But now, Messi, Neymar and Mbappé left the Ligue so there's no superstar anymore. Also :
- Qatar and Bein doesnt want to invest much in PSG and Ligue 1 as well
- Canal+ don't care any more
- Ligue 1 dreamed of Apple but that was just a dream
- after Covid, the league was almost bankrupted and accepted a deal with CVC where they would give them 1.1B cash in exchange of 13% of all future revenue... for life...
- All in all, nobody really likes Ligue 1 like that any more.
So DAZN came and valued the 80% rights lot for 375M and overall 500M for all rights.
Ligue 1 president obviously thinks this is too low as clubs budgeted for 800M rights. So he has this idea of creating its own platform with Warner where he somehow would reach 2M subscribers at 30€/month (just for Ligue 1 lol)
For comparison, Bein Sports is 15/month and has La Liga, Buli, NBA, WTA tour, Euro etc..
Pure arrogance the whole debacle.