Ligue 1

Jaume Roures speaks about Mediapro cancelling its multi-billion pound Ligue 1 broadcast deal, a move that left French football in crisis.

It would be the first and last instalment Mediapro paid because by September it was asking the league to renegotiate the deal. At that point, Roures still did not have a name for his new channel, let alone the millions of subscribers he would need to make his massive, competition-skewing punt on French football pay off. Nobody would dispute his claim that trying to start a new subscription channel for French football in a pandemic was difficult. So, Roures then turned his attention to Ligue 1, offering the French league 60 per cent more than its longstanding broadcast partner Canal+ was willing to pay. Yes, the 2019-20 season was interrupted in France, like everywhere else, and did not resume, unlike most other leagues. “The right to broadcast in bars and pubs represented 12 per cent of the total. We presented a negotiation and finally, we got to a new agreement to leave from there. Ligue 1 were not to blame for them, of course, but neither were we as a company. If the product is not the same you sold, maybe it’s not your fault, but neither is it the broadcasters’.” Mediapro is still in a legal dispute with French newspaper L’Equipe over the publication of a front page in 2020. “Ligue 1 was the only league that did not finish the season 2019-20. The calculations are easy to do.