According to L'Equipe.fr, the Professional Football League will announce this Thursday in a letter to the clubs, having "given notice" to the company Mediapro to settle the bill for October TV rights (172 million euros).
Under the hand of the Executive Director General Arnaud Rouger, it is specified that the LFP activated the guarantee given by the Chinese shareholder of the Spanish television group.
A procedure that could lead to the termination of the contract with Mediapro, holder of 80% of the TV rights of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 for the sum of 814 million euros annually between 2020 and 2024.
“Mediapro has placed itself well under the protection of the Commercial Court of Nanterre within the framework of an ad hoc mandate procedure,” writes the executive DG of the LFP.
We were therefore held to a strict confidentiality obligation since last week in order not to put the LFP in default.
Therefore, without going into the details of the file, the LFP did indeed, as the procedure requires, a proposal (validated by the Bureau) to the ad hoc representative.
This was followed by a response from Mediapro which was totally unacceptable given the financial uncertainties for the clubs.
We therefore applied the contract that binds us with Mediapro and put them on notice to settle the installments of October 1 and 5, while activating the guarantee given by the parent company of the Mediapro group (the Chinese fund Orient Hontai Capital).
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Safety plan
The sports daily reveals that the Professional Football League has also drawn up a financial rescue plan to fill the hole caused by Mediapro, following this non-settlement.
The LFP would be ready to contract a first loan of 120 million euros from a bank, to which it would add 50 million euros contributed from its own funds to reach the 172 million euros missing from the treasury.
This first loan should be validated this morning by the Board of Directors meeting at 10:30 am, before being presented to the general meeting at the beginning of next week.
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In this case, President Vincent Labrune would have relied on the president of FC Lorient, Loïc Féry, specialist in finance, and Sébastien Cazaly, CFO of the LFP.
In the space of six months, following the loan guaranteed by the State (PGE) taken out in the spring, the League would contract an overall loan of € 344.5 million, which could reach € 500 million if the € 150 million promised by Mediapro in December were not paid.
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