“The Mediapro contract is concrete.
“This May 31, 2018, Yves Wehrli, lawyer for the firm Clifford Chance and the Professional Football League, finishes winning the decision of the 25 members of the board of directors of the LFP.
Mediapro will well become the new broadcaster of L1.
This Spanish group, which passed under the Chinese flag in February 2018, acquired most of the TV rights to French football for 814 million euros per year two days earlier, in the face of Canal +, the historic broadcaster.
On May 29, 2018, if the leaders of the encrypted channel make a face, it is quite the opposite in the premises of Clifford Chance.
The phones of the club presidents were left at the entrance to respect the confidentiality of the conduct of the call for tenders.
But if they had had their smartphones, the bosses of the hexagonal stables could have immortalized the broad smiles crossing their faces.
The symbolic billion euros mark has finally been crossed.
Exactly 1.135 billion euros per year, including all broadcasters, for TV rights to French football.
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TV and Mediapro rights: French football on the brink of the financial crisis
This is still far from the 2.76 billion euros of the English Premier League, but above the target that had been set for Didier Quillot, then executive director general of the LFP.
“We must remember that at the time he said to the League that if Didier Quillot and Mathieu Ficot (then marketing director) did not reach the billion, they would be fired.
There was absolute pressure on this figure, ”remembers a regular in the arcana of the LFP.
The sub-license, a new weapon of the LFP
But to reach this symbolic bar, it took competitors and a well-crafted call for tenders.
Between autumn 2017 and spring 2018, the decision-makers of the LFP will work hard to put both in place with the blessing of the steering committee.
This emanation from the League's board of directors, where a representative sample of the presidents of L1 and L2 (Eyraud, Rivère, Vasilyev, Caïazzo, Desplat, etc.) sits, validates the broad outlines of the call for tenders drawn up by the leaders of the League.
They are the ones who will give their agreement for the implementation of the sub-license, this possibility offered to the purchaser of the rights to resell one or more lots to other broadcasters.
Until then, the League had refused to consider such an option.
“But in 2018, Canal + is pushing for the implementation of the sub-license, remembers an actor.
Canal has an absolute dream which is to reconstitute the monopoly of 1984 and to be the one-stop shop for Ligue 1. "
If the leaders of the League decide to take the plunge, it is above all because they are convinced that the sublicense will make it possible to attract as many candidates as possible.
At that time, they already know that the Americans and the Chinese will not be.
At the beginning of 2018, Quillot and its marketing director toured the major telecommunications operators and GAFAs.
The Americans Google, Facebook, Telco Group, or the Chinese of Wanda Group are declining.
Amazon is also passing its turn, preferring to focus on the Premier League.
Only the Spanish Mediapro shows an interest.
But the group founded by Jaumes Roures in 1994 is an agency, not a TV, even if it then holds a good part of the rights to La Liga since 2015.
The previous Italian example
In Spain, Mediapro has indeed launched a sports channel, but for that it needed to partner with beIN Sports, within a joint venture.
In this perspective, the implementation of the sub-license is a boon for the Spanish group which will then try to resell certain rights but without success.
“It is likely that if there had not been the possibility of sublicensing the lots, Mediapro would not have come.
And you would have had an amount of the call for tenders which would perhaps have fallen, ”says a former manager.
Jaume Roures, the boss of Mediapro./LP/Jean-Baptiste Quentin
At the time, the name of Mediapro was however ticking.
Some presidents are worried that in Italy, the 1 billion euro contract signed by the Spanish agency for the 2018-2021 rights to Serie A matches (the Italian D1) was suspended by the courts after the protests of its competitor Sky.
PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, also boss of beIN, criticizes the reliability of his competitor.
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“Mediapro is a bad choice,” he repeats.
They won't pay.
”It must be said that after having married, Mediapro and beIN fell out.
But in the League, we consider that "NAK" is judge and party, since beIN was one of the losers of the tender.
Even the President of the Republic recently explained that he had expressed his concerns to the leaders of the LFP ...
"What's wrong is the business model"
“We alerted the League.
We knew that this contract was fragile.
I think the people who negotiated this contract were not serious, ”said Emmanuel Macron last month.
A version of the facts denied by Didier Quillot and corrected by the Elysée.
"The president was talking about the discussions and questions that may have arisen after the signing of the Mediapro contract," Emmanuel Macron's entourage explained to us.
We do not dispute what Didier Quillot says about the fact that there was no written letter from the president before the signing.
The Elysee was not informed of the names of possible candidates.
In his desire to give pledges to public opinion that the state will not come to the aid of French football, Macron has revived criticism of the inconsistency of its leaders.
This inability of the leaders of the League and of the steering committee to financially guarantee the annual billion, weighed and still weighs in criticism.
“The tradition of the bank guarantee is not, however, something usual in the system of TV tenders.
This would cost too much, recalls LREM deputy Cédric Roussel who is leading hearings in the Assembly on this file.
What is wrong is not so much Mediapro's solvency, but the business model.
The Covid is certainly an aggravating factor, but at the start, the economic challenge of creating a channel with zero subscribers (
Editor's note: Mediapro announces 600,000 today
) is ambitious.
In any case, if there is lightness in this issue, it is collective.
“And it is collectively that French football now finds itself on the brink of the abyss.