Good news for French basketball fans. The National Basketball League sent an email this Friday afternoon to the managers of the French Championship clubs to announce that an agreement had been reached with the Chaine l’Équipe to continue to broadcast the Sunday evening poster.
The duel at the top of Betclic Élite between Asvel (3rd) and Paris Basketball (2nd and winner of the Eurocup last week) will therefore be accessible to as many people as possible, in clear language.
On the other hand, all the other matches of the 30th day scheduled for this weekend will not be visible. Instead, subscribers to the Skweek digital platform will be treated to a black screen. “For legal reasons”, explains the LNB, the matches will also not be visible on the Basketball League platform (LNBTV) via Keemotion.
No agreement has yet been reached for the broadcast of the 31st day, scheduled for Tuesday April 23 and Wednesday April 24. Everything is not settled, far from it, but, in a minimum of time, the Basketball League made it possible to avoid the worst… Faced with an “economically unbearable” situation, the L’Équipe channel had broken the contract which linked it to Skweek on Wednesday, causing the non-broadcast of the advanced match of the 31st day between Roanne and Monaco the same evening.
“In 48 hours we concluded an agreement to broadcast Betclic Élite with L’Équipe until the end of the 2023/2024 season,” indicates the LNB in the letter that Le Parisien was able to consult. The channel now has the rights to the Sunday poster, 7 p.m., from this Sunday, April 21 until the last match of the finals. » There are 5 days left to play in the regular phase.
The agreement also provides that the channel “will have a minimum volume of six matches to be distributed between the quarter-finals and the semi-finals, and will broadcast the entire finals”.
Discussions are therefore continuing between the various stakeholders in this matter to find a solution quickly. “A meeting was held today (Friday April 19) with the leaders of the FFBB (French basketball federation) and those Skweek in order to find rapid solutions on all other available rights, explains the LNB in its letter. Despite the motivation displayed by Skweek to find solutions, without paying its dues to the L’Équipe group, it seems complicated to us that a favorable outcome can be found quickly. »
In the meantime, clubs have been invited to maintain “the Skweek visibility system (markings)” and the times initially planned will be kept.
Since the start of the season, and as revealed by Le Parisien, Skweek, owned by FedCom Media, a branch of the multinational FedCom whose owner is businessman Alexeï Fedorychev, also owner of the Monaco basketball club, has accumulated unpaid and late payments from numerous partners.
Among them: L’Équipe, which produces matches for the French Championship via its company 21 Prod, or even IMG for the Euroleague. The damage amounts to several million euros. The Asvel club, of which Skweek is the jersey sponsor, also finds itself in financial difficulty. The club would have only received 2 million euros out of the 7 planned in the contract at the start of the season.
Furthermore, many supporters across France, who had taken out a subscription at the start of the season, now find themselves with a black screen…