“
I haven't commented on the Médiapro affair for almost a year.
I will do it in front of you, and be as precise and rigorous as possible
”.
The hearing of the former number 1 of the LFP against Régis Juanico and Cédric Roussel, both members of the Sport Economics study group ”, was eagerly awaited.
Didier Quillot spent much of his three hours of hearing to justify himself in relation to the many influences he suffered when renegotiating TV rights in France.
“
In 2017-2018, Neymar arrives in the French championship and the Altice group arrives in the TV rights market.
In Europe, all the major championships are seeing their rights increase
”or“
There is pressure from French clubs to reach one billion TV rights.
"
"Canal + wanted to fail the call for tenders as soon as they did not obtain lot 1."
Didier Quillot
It is therefore logical that he accepted the offer of this new broadcaster that is Mediapro which had offered 780 million euros to acquire 80% of the broadcasting rights of Ligue 1. With the help of other broadcasters including
beIN SPORTS,
the total had reached 1.153 billion euros per season. The other historic broadcaster of Ligue 1,
Canal +
, was also in the sights of Didier Quillot by asserting that the encrypted channel through its director Maxime Saada "
wished to fail the call for tenders as soon as they didn't get lot 1.
”He accuses
Canal +
not to have aligned itself with the offers of its competitors with very low amounts proposed so as not to reach the reserve price set by the LFP for obtaining TV rights.
Quillot praises the "extremely rigorous" behavior of its teams
If the former boss of French football praised the professionalism of his teams during tough negotiations. "
We were neither blind nor reckless, we were extremely rigorous all along, on the basis of what our experts told us", he
underlines before insisting on "
the impossibility
" to request financial guarantees from Mediapro because “
this had never been requested before
”. He also pleaded for a change in Chinese law that forced part of the Sino-Spanish consortium to withdraw its financial support and cause the default of Jaime Roures' group. Mr Quillot concluded his hearing by defending several ideas for reform and concluding "
I think that French football will rebound and that all the parameters will start to rise again. But we must not do without constructive and lasting reforms
”.