A milestone, nothing more, nothing less. This Friday a new board of directors of the Professional Football League was held. The agenda was clear: the state of negotiations around domestic rights for the L1 for the 2024-2029 cycle.
Opened this fall, this file has not yet been completed. And French football is still quivering, in the hope of a “landing” – a fashionable term – as less violent as possible. Very few of them now believe in an amount equivalent to that received during the previous cycle (663 million national rights). The objective of 500 million per year seems more reasonable.
The anxiety of certain presidents
Waldemar Kita, president of FC Nantes, took the floor to express his concern. Like him, many second-rate teams know they are in a perilous economic situation. “Some clubs could consider filing for bankruptcy,” worried Philippe Diallo, president of the FFF, recently.
Other leaders like Joseph Oughourlian (RC Lens), Jean-Pierre Rivère (OGC Nice) or Pierre-Olivier Murat (Rodez Aveyron Football) also requested clarification on the short-term financial balance of French clubs in the event of creation of a 100% Ligue 1 channel which will inevitably take time to ramp up. They want concrete elements of cash flow for the months to come. But no guarantee could be provided. In any case, nothing much more precise than what was revealed before the previous CA on June 5.
Technically, the means would already be ready. In particular, a control room was purchased. The price of the subscription is always set at 25 euros excluding taxes, that is to say 30 euros for the consumer. The stated objective is to attract 2.07 million subscribers this season to increase to 3.37 million in 2028-2029.
Still hoping for an exchange with Canal+
If Vincent Labrune continues his business of legitimizing plan B, he nonetheless remains open to a return of Canal+ to the negotiating table. For him, a meeting with the encrypted channel is always possible. What the vast majority of club bosses still dream of.
On Wednesday, the Team revealed that a meeting had been canceled at the last moment. Maxime Saada, chairman of the management board of Canal+, not having appreciated the comments made by Labrune in Le Monde on the previous call for tenders won by Amazon Prime.
CVC also participated in this meeting. The Luxembourg investment fund was represented as the day before in the Senate by Jean-Christophe Germani, president and Edouard Conques, managing director of CVC Capital partners. They repeated that they wanted to play their role of support. While being firm on the method to follow. They did not really appreciate that certain leaders were speaking in the press about a potential financial gesture in the event of a lower agreement. One of the avenues mentioned consists of shifting the schedule for the first reimbursements. As a reminder, the LFP granted them 13% of the capital of the commercial company in 2022 in exchange for 1.5 billion euros of investment after the health crisis and the failure of Mediapro.