The Battle for TV Rights III: Ligue 1 Completely Privatized

By: Inara | February 11th, 2008

After months of ~~fighting~~ negotiating, the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) have finally struck a deal for Ligue 1’s broadcasting rights for 2008-2012. You can read my previous updates here and here, which explain the situation in some detail.

The last deal, worth €600m (well, actually €653m) with Canal+ being the main buyers, was at the time of its signing the most expensive TV deal in the footballing world. It was seen as a huge step forward for French football.

Unfortunately, Canal+ were very unhappy with the absence of a real title race in France, and coupled with the lack of big players and the low amount of goals scored, Canal+ went around saying how they had spent too much money on French football and refused to commit a similar amount for their next deal. They had assumed - and rightly so - that no other French broadcaster could afford anything close to what Canal+ could offer, even if it was a much lower amount, like €450m.

But what the suits at Canal+ didn’t expect was the LFP’s controversial decision to split broadcasting rights into 12 “lots,” which suddenly made L1 much more affordable for smaller broadcasters, such as Orange. These lots basically split up coverage of L1 football into different groups of matches (such as Sunday games, Saturday games, magazine programs, etc).

This tactic failed the first time when the highest bid the LFP received was €500m. Yikes. Did French football really devalue that much? So the LFP held a second bid last week, and thankfully this time, proper bids were offered. After a great deal of suspense, the LFP revealed that the new deal is now worth €668m, approximately €15m more than the last deal.

How the lots are split up:

Lot 1 Premium - The 10 most attractive games on Sunday: Canal+
Lot 2 Premium - The 28 other matches on Sunday: Canal+
Lot 3 Premium - The 38 matches on Saturday evening: Orange
Lot 4 Fans - All the matches of 6 clubs: Canal+
Lot 5 Fans - All the matches of 7 clubs: Canal+
Lot 6 Fans - All the matches of 7 clubs: Canal+
Lot 7 Multiplex - Four major events (1re et 20e journées, 37e et 38e journées): Canal+
Lot 8 Magazine - Ligue 1, Saturday and Sunday evening: Canal+
Lot 9 Magazine - All competitions, Sunday morning and afternoon: Canal+
Lot 10 Magazine - Ligue 1, Monday evening: Canal+
Lot 11 Magazine - Best moments of L1 on Video on Demand (VOD) throughout the week: Orange
Lot 12 Mobile - Almost all afternoon matches live as well as recaps from evening matches: Orange

Well, this deal isn’t the €750m I was hoping for (or the €900 Jean-Michel Aulas was demanding), but at least the deal didn’t go down. That would have been bad. French clubs are barely making ends meet as it is. And while the new deal won’t drastically affect the clubs (actually, most clubs won’t even notice much of a difference), it’s an improvement. Perhaps the deal would have been worth more if clubs like Marseille and PSG hung out in the top half of the table, but hey, I’m not complaining.

But here’s the thing. If you look carefully, you’ll see that all twelve lots were snapped up by only two broadcasters (Canal+ and Orange), who managed outbid all other interested parties, and of the two, Canal+ swept up nine of the twelve lots. Orange took the other three. For those of us living outside of France, who gets what lot doesn’t matter, but for those in France, this is in fact a very big deal.

Canal+ and Orange are both pay channels, so anyone wanting to watch L1 would have to be a subscriber. France’s two public channels that normally broadcast football, France Television and TF1, lost their grips on their preferred lots. Now, I’ll all for higher broadcasting rights since this will help clubs in the long run, but it blows that in France, you can’t watch L1 for free anymore, not even the highlights.

Public broadcasters are not happy about this, especially the fact that this is the first time in 30 years that this has happened. France 2 Foot has gone so far as to accuse the clubs of looking to their own finances and not caring about their fans.

Do you guys think this is a bad move? Or do most people have Canal+ anyway and won’t feel the effects of this new deal?