The daily
L'Équipe is
launching an online platform on Wednesday that will offer, in addition to sports news, original content and live sport, a way for the group hard hit by the health crisis to bounce back by accelerating in digital.
This platform, which will replace the group's website, will offer two new pillars alongside sports information to attract Internet users. The “
Explore
” section will bring together 300 creations and original content around sport (reports, documentaries, podcasts, surveys, long formats, etc.).
The other novelty, the “
Live
”, wants to be “
the largest offer of live sport accessible to all
”, according to the leaders of the sports media group.
This offer will consist of 35 sports, including 25 Olympic sports, with swimming, athletics, mechanical sports, football, basketball, freestyle skiing, etc.
Some competitions will be available exclusively on the platform and others will be partly broadcast on the group's TNT channel.
This “
Live
” will include a total of 2,500 hours of direct, of which 1,800 are exclusive to the platform (not broadcast on the L'Équipe channel or elsewhere), also available in catch-up, with 287 events and 23 European or world championships.
"Explore" available from € 7.99
The live sports offer will be almost entirely free, like the L'Équipe channel which is broadcast on TNT channel 21.
It aims to develop the title's digital audience (which already claims 60 million videos viewed per month) and its advertising revenue.
Second engine, "Explore" wants to be a source of subscriptions to the platform: subscribers will have access to all of this original content, whatever the formula chosen, for prices ranging from 7.99 to 15 , 99 euros per month.
This platform should allow
L'Équipe
to move “
into a new digital era,
” commented Laurent Prud'homme, the new managing director of the sports media group, who took over from Jean-Louis Pelé at the beginning of March.
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He sees in this project, which should help the group to meet its objective of 450,000 digital subscriptions by 2025 (against 308,000 currently) "
a turning point
", comparable to the passage of the daily
L'Équipe
in tabloid format, in 2015.
This digital transformation was accelerated last year by the health crisis.
This strongly affected the written press and the sports media, with the cessation of competitions for months, the fall of the advertising market, not to mention the bankruptcy of the newspaper distributor Presstalis.
The group plans to cut 50 jobs
If the group is going back on the offensive with the launch of this platform, the unions are wondering about the resources allocated to this device, while the group is committed to a job protection plan (PSE) providing for the elimination of 'about fifty positions.
He was at the origin of a massive strike which resulted in the non-publication of the sports daily for two weeks in January.
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For Stéphane Antoine of the SNJ-CGT, "this
is a very ambitious project, but the staff assigned by the company to the Explore service as part of the reorganization will not be enough to supply the platform with paid content
". And for the moment, "
the staff representatives have not had any information on the means implemented to provide around fifteen new content per month on the platform, and in particular on the use of freelancers or external suppliers
" , he added.