Bad fortunes are piling up for French football.
First, a Covid-19 epidemic that sets in, disrupts the holding of meetings and sets up closed session.
Then, the sudden shutdown of TV broadcaster Mediapro forced to throw in the towel.
For its spectators and televiewers, football has sometimes become invisible because of health rules and the multiplication of its broadcasters.
A forced and forced weaning which also concerns private amateurs for the moment of competition.
PODCAST. TV rights of French football: story of the Mediapro fiasco
A feeling of blues summarized by Azid, a thirty-something from Seine-et-Marne passionate about round ball and especially PSG.
“I wanted to talk the other day about the Manchester-PSG meeting in the Champions League.
No one had seen the game.
So, we discussed a Netflix series.
"
"Football has lost its ritualistic aspect"
Yes, it is more and more complicated to satisfy your passion for the football.
"The pandemic is disrupting habits but the concern is deeper," says Patrick Mignon, sports sociologist.
Football has lost its primordial ritualistic aspect.
He no longer has visibility.
Previously, for a European Cup match we would meet in front of the screen and it was a party, a social bond.
Who now watches PSG matches in the Champions League?
Almost no one because almost no one has access to it.
"
Habits end up being lost: “It's true, continues Guillaume, Norman supporter and assiduous player for 40 years.
Football is no longer necessarily our main topic of conversation between friends.
We don't play anymore, we don't watch anymore.
With our own worries, we end up forgetting it ”.
We thought he was invincible but football will not emerge unscathed from the Covid crisis: "He is not going to die but he will no longer be what he was, it is a certainty", insists Patrick Mignon.
The OM-PSG clasico no longer attracts
This drop in interest is a fact on TV where since the start of the season, apart from the Blues matches on TF1 or M 6, audiences are poor.
Summit of Ligue 1, the PSG-OM clasico in September would have been seen by only 400,000 viewers on the new Mediapro channel.
It is very far from the 2.57 million in the fall of 2017 for the first PSG-OM of Neymar and Mbappé on Canal +.
Since the summer, only PSG-Rennes of November 7 has exceeded one million subscribers on the encrypted channel (1.026 million viewers) where football is regularly overtaken by Formula 1 audiences.
This disaffection is not just a Franco-French phenomenon.
It appears clearly in the annual study published in November by the European Club Association (ECA).
An observation which the body which has 220 members among the biggest clubs of the Old Continent has no reason to minimize the impact.
Check out the ECA Annual Report 2019/20 👇
✍️ Including personal messages from the ECA Chairman, CEO and @UEFA President, as football seeks to recover from a turbulent year for the gamehttps: //t.co/SwFtl6EJLu
- ECA (@ECAEurope) November 5, 2020
2 in 5 young people aged 16 to 24 have no interest in football
The report notes, however, that at the European level, in the 16-24 age group, both sexes combined, 2 out of 5 young people, or 40%, have absolutely no interest in football.
13% of young people among this generation even say they “hate” football.
In this age group so important for gaining future supporters, never has the attraction for the king sport been so weak: “Interest is decreasing.
This worrying figure leaves us to fear a generation without fans in the near future.
It is all the more problematic as it is at this age that we make our own decisions and spend our own money, ”worries Charlie Marshall, the association's boss.
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In the upper age groups, disinterest decreases.
A proportion not encouraging either.
"It is generally estimated that one in three French people are directly or indirectly interested in football," continues sociologist Patrick Mignon.
It goes up to 80% with the France team.
Only, in France we do not have the culture of supporterism.
It is to be feared that people after the Covid will not all return to the stadium because they have simply lost the habit and the desire to do so.
The pandemic shows us that football, which thought itself untouchable and immortal is more fragile than it thought, and not only from a single economic point of view.
"
