The legal dispute between French football and Canal+ and beIN Sports over Ligue 1 TV rights resumes on Wednesday after several months of calm.
Attacked from all sides, the Professional Football League (LFP) has so far always been supported by the courts.
On Wednesday, Canal+ asks the Versailles Court of Appeal to authorize it to terminate its sub-license contract signed with beIN Sports, an outcome which would oblige the Qatari broadcaster to broadcast and pay, in the middle of the season, two matches of Ligue 1 per week.
A judgment that would go against a decision of the commercial court in August.
Read alsoMaxime Saada: “For Canal+, Ligue 1 has lost a lot of value”
Mired for almost 18 months in this unprecedented crisis of their audiovisual rights, French clubs are living under the sword of Damocles of court decisions, without assurances on the amount of rights, their main source of income, at a time when their finances have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The nightmare has been going on since the fall of 2020, and the failure of Mediapro, which promised more than 800 million euros per year for the majority of matches in the French championships.
The Sino-Spanish group stopped its payments in the middle of the season before negotiating its withdrawal from the market, plunging the sector into the unknown for several months.
For the viewer, the fog was cleared in the heart of summer 2021 after several court decisions.
To watch Ligue 1 this season, a supporter needs two subscriptions, to Amazon Prime Video, which holds 80% of the matches including the 10 best posters, and to Canal+, forced by the courts to broadcast and pay the remaining 20%. .
Read alsoAmazon would have 1.4 million subscribers to its Ligue 1 offer
But behind the scenes, the encrypted channel continues to contest a situation that it deems "anti-competitive" and activates all the legal procedures at its disposal to try to terminate its contract... It considers that it is paying too much, at a price fixed as of 2018, at the time of Mediapro's promises, which would have artificially inflated the value of French football.
A price now rendered obsolete, according to Canal, by the inability of the latter to respect them.
"
Unfair
"
The Vivendi group's channel considers itself the victim of "
unfair treatment
" by the LFP: it cannot bear that Amazon recovered, last June, the broadcasting of the eight matches per day of Ligue 1 left vacant by Mediapro at a price broken (250 M EUR annually), where Canal must always pay 332 million euros per year for its two meetings, this famous “
lot N.3
” awarded from 2018 to beIN Sports then sub-licensed to Canal.
This is the heart of Wednesday's hearing in Versailles, whose decision is expected within a month.
If the encrypted channel won its case in this rare case where beIN and Canal+ are opposed, the L1 would experience a totally crazy turnaround in the heart of the season, because beIN Sports would then have to broadcast two matches per weekend, and especially support the cost.
But "
objectively, I do not see very well how Canal + could shell out the sub-license contract
", tempers a connoisseur of the file, for whom the encrypted channel is simply trying "
to discourage the League by multiplying the recourses
".
Nearly a dozen procedures
This hearing opens a turbulent legal semester: nearly a dozen procedures have been launched in all, beIN Sports and Canal + acting hand in hand on most of them, without success for the moment.
The Paris Court of Appeal, the Paris Court of Justice and the Competition Authority are notably seized of different aspects of the case.
Read alsoLigue 1: beIN Sports relaunches the TV rights war
These repeated appeals, “
it is Vivendi's strategy, which makes them a matter of principle.
But it's a huge waste
, ”regrets a French football player.
The mess is all the more clear in view of the figures: while he hoped to receive 1.153 billion euros per year for Ligue 1 over the period 2020-2024 at the end of his 2018 call for tenders, the foot pro tricolor must now live with 624 million.
And manage an open conflict with its two historical broadcasters.