Mediapro agreed to pay Ligue 1 clubs €3.25bn over four seasons. They did not even keep up their payments for four months
By Adam White for Get French Football News
Exhausted, dehydrated and stranded, surrounded by sand dunes and a cloudless sky, sweat is wiped from the brow. The sight of palm trees and a sparkling lake in the distance flickers and then vanishes. This is the situation in which Ligue 1 has found itself this year. After being starved of success, French clubs hoped they would be revitalised by an unprecedented TV rights deal worth more than €1.15bn per year (€814m a year from Mediapro and €330m from BeIN Sports). It was the second largest TV deal in Europe, but the mirage finally disappeared this week, pushing French football to the brink of financial ruin.
There had been concerns about Mediapro from the start. When the rights were sold in 2018, critics pointed out that a similar deal with Serie A had fallen through because the Spanish broadcaster had not offered adequate financial guarantees. Gaetano Miccichè, the president of Serie A at the time, said the assurances provided by Mediapro were “unacceptable”. Worryingly, Nice CEO Bob Ratcliffe said earlier this year that, as far as he understood, the LFP had “never asked for” similar guarantees.
Written by Adam White
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/dec/15/ligue-1-clubs-stare-financial-abyss-tv-deal-collapses-mediapro under the title “Ligue 1 clubs stare into financial abyss after huge TV deal collapses”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
