The Battle for TV Rights
By: Inara | September 26th, 2007Jean-Michel Aulas has a lot of jobs.
He’s the president and main shareholder of Olympique Lyonnais, and has been so for 20 years. He’s also the president of CEGID, an information technology company he started in his younger years. And recently he was elected president of the G14, a lobbying group of the biggest European clubs. And in his spare time, he’s also vice-president of the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP).
Aulas is slowly becoming the face of French football (with Lyon conveniently riding on his coattails). If anyone is going to make crazy, attention grabbing statements, it’s him, because the man has an opinion on everything.
So what is Aulas up to now?
Don’t look now, but I think he’s making money.
If you guys have been paying attention to French footie news, you’ll know that Canal+, the company that owns the broadcasting rights to L1, is unhappy with the “product” and wants to lower the price of the next deal, which will be from 2008-2011. The previous deal, from 2005-2008, was worth 600 million euros, and was at the time the most expensive footballing TV deal in history.
Canal+ naturally expected L1 to deliver exciting, jaw dropping football. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and with the lack of a real title race, they don’t want to make the same mistake twice.
But Aulas and the LFP are sharpening their own negotiation tactics. Aulas believes – and rightly so – that it’s because of L1 that Canal+ is doing so well. No one gets Canal+ to watch documentaries or a few movies which can be rented from the video store.
Canal+ can’t afford to let what is still a lucrative product walk out the door. In France, football is now the most popular sport. In the US, that would be like ESPN2 saying they won’t broadcast basketball!
And France, being the chauvinistic country that it is, is less interested in football of other championships. A Lorient-Nancy match will have more viewers than Manchester United-Chelsea, and L2 will draw more viewers than rugby. So if Canal+ can’t show viewers their own league, there will be a huge drop in their subscribers.
Even Aulas’s frienemy, Pape Diouf, has chimed in his support by saying this little gem:
Without football, Canal+ would be Canal-.
Aulas also argues that investment in broadcasting is a necessary part of L1’s development. If TV deals in other leagues are going up, so should L1’s. Even the broadcasting rights to the African Cup of Nations increased by 50%…He goes so far as to say that he expects a 750 million deal for 2008-2011. And if Canal+ doesn’t pay up, then the broadcasting rights will go elsewhere.
Is he bluffing? Or does he actually have other alternatives up his sleeve? We’ll find out soon.
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Comments
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YESSSSSS! I hope Aulas keeps pushing the television companies. There no reason why Ligue 1 cant be as good as EPL, La Liga, and Serie A, with some money the whole face of the ligue 1 will change. The style of French football is appealing, face paced and little time for mistakes, like the EPL.
Posted from
United States
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there’s plenty of competition this year. Lyon isnt even in the top three.
Posted from
United States -
The French public is difficult to make happy. There is competition this year, but the competition people really wanted to see are clubs like Marseille, Lyon, and PSG fighting neck to neck. Instead, we are seeing Nancy, Valenciennes, and Bordeaux.
Anyway, we all know that within a few weeks, Nancy and Valenciennes will drop away. Bordeaux however does pose a very real title threat.
Posted from
United States -
AH for hose who wanted tickets for the rangers, I think the official website is selling them again!
Anyway it is what is said on the main page. 30 euros for a ticket.
Good Luck!Posted from
Japan -
The french public is impossible to please for many reasons. Until a few years ago some of the richer clubs (Marseille, Paris, Monaco, Bordeaux, Lyon and Lens) could get a few top notch payers, making the Ligue 1 the fourth league in terms of money but at least third in terms of spectacle and competition level. Just look at the nineties, marseille went to two CL finals and won one, the same for Paris. In the beginning of the 2000, Monaco, Marseille (twice) reached European finals. But then all went to shit. After the tax changes by Marie Georges Buffet, the communist sports minister, french clubs were pushed into cleaning their finances right away and were ordained to abandon what they were calling financial irresponsability.
Now the Ligue 1 is fifth after the EPL, La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga. The best exmple of that is Diego accepting to renew his contract when madrid has been trying to get him for a while. If he was playing in France, he would have left.
Plus the french government and organization are so adamant in trying to control everything that money won’t come in this country. Look at last year’s sponsor’s scandals. All these internet betting websites started sponsoring clubs and all of them were put under heavy scrutiny and BWIN presidents were even arrested in Monaco. La Francaise des jeux (which doesn’t sponsorize any team and just wants to keep the monopoly on sports betting) is lobbying like crazy to get them banned. And they have a nice little puppett in Mr Escallette. Now Canal Plus is the only source of money so they’re in a position of power.
I mean Canal+ should be happy they only have to pay those 750 millions. If they didn’t show Ligue1 and with the shitty programming they’ve ben offering lately, nobody would tune in. But no, Alexandre Bompard can come in meeting and just say outlandish shit like “we don’t need you that much, we have every other championship” and like Pape Diouf said “Valenciennes-Lorient still gets much more viewers than Man U-Chelsea”.
We’ll see how it unfoldsPosted from
France -
Wasn’t the biggest problem for the LFP getting around the French tax code? Isn’t that the biggest obstacle for getting more in their prime stars? It seems the LFP is destined to continue maturing the talent to be sent off to the EPL.
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United States -
Massaer: I don’t think that Diego’s contract renewal means anything but a higher paycheck for Diego and a higher transfer fee for Bremen. If Diego keeps playing like he is atm, Real Madrid (and potentially other rich clubs) will make it as difficult for Bremen to keep him, as it would be for a Ligue 1 team.
Changing French tax laws for a mere 548 players playing in Ligue 1 would be silly. Or is this a special case law that doesn’t apply to all high earners but just athletes?
Posted from
Germany -
Since 2001, there have been changes in french law that put french clubs on par with english, spanish, german and italian clubs in terms of financial charges and tax…
http://www.cahiersdufootball.com/article.php?id=1750
http://www.unionfinancieredefrance.fr/index.asp?rub=actu&srub=4&info=41I don’t think that Canal+ “need” Ligue 1 that much to be honest… Look at the ratings that Telefoot is getting without L1 or L2, and those of France2Foot : 32% for Telefoot (only foreign leagues), 13% for France2Foot (only domestic leagues)…
The bidding process is a blind bid, so it encourages high prices. But who can even cop out 600M€ for Ligue 1 except for Canal+? Hell, who can cop out 300M€ for Ligue 1? Nobody except for Canal+. TF1 only have one channel, so I doubt they’d want to buy exclusive rights (they might negociate an offer with Canal+), FranceTelevisions is losing money on their weekly football program (France2Foot), so I doubt that they’ll want to bid for Ligue 1, and since it’s public money, I doubt they’d be allowed to. So who else is there?
The 600M€ price tag was only there because TPS and Canal+ were battling it out to have exclusive rights over Ligue 1. Now that Canal+ has bought TPS, they have no reason to increase their bid, and could decrease their bid, since they have no competition.
I don’t think that Lorient-Valenciennes attracts more viewers than Manchester-Chelsea, even in France. After all, according to Médiamat Sport+ hit 0,3% with Metz–Lille, and 0,6% with Manchester-Chelsea… And that’s on a secondary channel in their network. When the charity shield was shown on Canal+, it achieved 3,8% at 16h00, whilst Lyon-Auxerre that evening brought 4%… Despite being on during prime-time.
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France -
Shazback: Interesting articles about the taxes. The German division of Ernst&Young published a report on football finances one year ago, which took a look at the player salary situation in Europe. They created a dummy squad and then listed how much money this squad would cost a club each year in different European countries:
Germany €22,55m (set as 100%)
Netherlands €21,51m (%95)
Spain €19,84m (88%)
England €23,09m (102%)
Italy €24,87m (110%)
France €32,65m (145%)Though, they explicitly state that their model doesn’t account for any special cases and extra laws. In case of Spain and the Netherlands clubs would have the option for a flat tax for foreign employers, which would further lower the costs for their squads. And as you mentioned, France on the other hand may also have ways to keep the costs for the squad down.
Posted from
Germany
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