Several professional leagues expressed their “deep disagreement” and their “total misunderstanding” after the bill aimed at reforming professional sport carried by the senators Michel Savin (LR) and Laurent Lafon (UDI) in a letter which AFP obtained a copy this Wednesday.
“We want to share our total misunderstanding and deep disagreement with the provisions relating to institutional relations between federations and professional leagues,” write the presidents of the football leagues (Vincent Labrune), basketball (Philippe Ausseur), Cycling (Xavier Jan), Handball (Fabrice Boutet), Rugby (Yann Roubert) (Jean Azéma), as well as the boss of the Association of Professional Sports Leagues (David Tebib).
Arrangements presented under the prism of football, without consultation with other sports
“The architecture of the bill indeed takes a risk of weakening the leagues and destabilizing the French sports model, in reverse of all the work carried out for ten years on the subject and in contradiction with the stated objective of strengthening the efficiency of the institutional organization and the overall performance of professional sport”, add these leaders in their mail addressed to the two senators.
They regret that the arrangements are “presented to the only prism of the work carried out by the senatorial mission on football, without any consultation, therefore, with the institutions of other disciplines or analysis of their situation” and say they are “shocked by this lack of consideration for the diversity of professional sports, which much less exposed than football, have all developed their own model and are for some European or even global references of their discipline”.
The bill tabled on March 19 in the Senate notably proposes to strengthen the control of the French Football Federation (FFF) on the Professional Football League (LFP).
By recalling that the professional leagues “exercise a subdelegation of public service”, the text offers the possibility to the federations to withdraw it, before the scheduled deadline, in the event of “breach of the general interest of the discipline”.
The two senators also wish to strengthen the control and monitoring of budgets of professional clubs and leagues, strengthen controls on the creation of a commercial company by a league, and improve its governance. The leaders of the professional leagues believe that by remaining as it stands, the bill will inevitably accelerate the projects of private competitions on which our bodies would not have control.