The match between OM and PSG, which will be played this Sunday at the Orange Vélodrome stadium in Marseille, is one of the highlights of the French football championship.
And it is Amazon which will broadcast this Classico.
It is indeed the juggernaut of e-commerce, which today holds 80% of the rights to Ligue 1, the remaining 20% being held by Canal +.
Since the resumption of the championship matches on August 6, Amazon has never communicated any figures on the number of subscribers to its new offer.
The 6th wave of the OTT Barometer from NPA Conseil and Harris Interactive provides the beginning of an answer. Carried out from October 1 to 8, around a panel of more than 3,700 French people questioned, this study estimates at nearly 5%, the proportion of French households who are today customers of the Prime Video Ligue 1 service. million subscribers approximately. A quarter of them, that is to say around 360,000 households, are new customers who therefore pay between 17 and 19 euros per month. “
For the remaining three quarters, these are users who were already subscribed to Amazon Prime and who have activated the Ligue 1 Pass at 13 euros
», Details Philippe Bailly, president of NPA Conseil.
This is equivalent to 10% of Amazon Prime members, if we consider that in France, this service offering free delivery of groceries in addition to access to video and music streaming, would have won 10 million customers.
“
League 1 is less visible this year, but we are not observing a lack of interest in the competition
,” notes Philippe Bailly.
This is particularly true for Canal + subscribers, who remain very mobilized by Ligue 1
”.
Nearly one in two say they are “very” or “somewhat” interested in it, compared to one-third of Amazon Prime Video customers.
Last season, around the same time, Mediapro claimed 600,000 subscribers to its Téléfoot channel.
The newspaper
L'Équipe
estimated the number at 480,000 instead. If Amazon actually has 1.4 million subscribers, that would be a good result.
"
Despite everything, this leaves little hope for Amazon to make the Ligue 1 product profitable. The championship has resumed for nearly three months and I do not see what would make recruitments dizzyingly accelerate
.
"
Free cuts the grass under Amazon's foot
The Classico is however a good lever. It is indeed the ultimate event match, capable of triggering a subscription. But "
Free has pulled the rug out from under Amazon's feet a bit
," says the expert. Holder of the digital rights to the competition, Free has announced that it will offer the best moments of the OM-PSG match for free on its Free Ligue 1 application. “
You will see all the most beautiful moments: the highlights, the most beautiful actions, the most beautiful saves, the goals and I hope there will be many
“, Explained last Tuesday on Europe 1 Thomas Reynaud, CEO of the Iliad group, parent company of Free.
This is equivalent to 30 minutes of the match almost live.
In three days, the Free Ligue 1 application would have recorded more than 50,000 downloads and the pace should further accelerate during the weekend.
A nice publicity stunt to boost the notoriety of the service ...
Losses between 75 and 100 million euros
The president of NPA Conseil estimates that the turnover of the Amazon Ligue 1 service should amount to between 170 and 200 million euros excluding tax this year. "
Taking into account the 250 million euros paid for the acquisition of the rights, and the additional production costs, estimated at 25 million euros, Amazon's losses will be between 75 and 100 million euros
". The giant had yet recovered the TV rights of the Championship left vacant by Mediapro for scrapping. He paid 70% less than the Sino-Spanish group. "
This raises the question of the real value of Ligue 1,
" said the expert. These rights are in fact rarely profitable, regardless of the actors.
Their amortization is all the more complicated the greater the piracy.
According to the Barometer, more than a third of viewers in League 1 indicate that they have gone neither through Amazon nor Canal +, so they have resorted to piracy.
“
This represents more than two million French households
,” assures Philippe Bailly.
Piracy is the first winner in the situation,
”he concludes.