Four months and then leaves.
According to information from the Team, Téléfoot is going to go out of business.
Julien Bergeaud, the general manager of the main broadcaster of Ligue 1, announced this Friday morning to the teams that an agreement had been reached with the Professional Football League (LFP) and that the channel would have to stop.
For now, the leader has not given more details on the exact timetable or on the future of the 150 employees, including 60 journalists, who had been recruited this summer.
This announcement, made internally, is the last episode of a soap opera that had lasted since the start of the school year.
The Sino-Spanish group, which in 2018 won the tender for most of Ligue 1 and 2 for 830 million euros per year until 2024, no longer paid since October for the matches he broadcast on his antenna.
Believing that the Covid-19 crisis had depreciated the Ligue 1 “product”, he requested a rebate of 150 to 200 million euros from the LFP.
But the instance had refused.
Mediapro, which now owes 324 million euros in arrears to the footballing body, probably did not have the means to honor this debt.
Since mid-October, a conciliator appointed by the Nanterre commercial court has been trying to resolve this crisis.
It seems it is done.
Since 10 am this morning, the LFP has held a board of directors around the issue of TV rights and the contract signed with Mediapro.
If the shutdown of the Téléfoot channel has been looming for a few days, the case is still far from being resolved.
The main broadcaster in League 1 is throwing in the towel, of course.
But for the LFP, everything remains to be rebuilt.
