2023-09-26 13:50:55
Canal and Vivendi in the Bollorédossier era Feeling discredited by the Professional Football League, the Vivendi subsidiary sent a letter to its boss Vincent Labrune on Monday September 25 to announce that it would not participate in the current auction on the broadcast of League 1.
We wondered where relations between Canal + and the Professional Football League (LFP) stood, after the last three tense years, the fault of Ligue 1 retransmission rights which the Vivendi subsidiary considers to have overpaid. We have the answer: Monday, September 25 in the morning, the boss of Canal + Maxime Saada sent a curt missive to the president of the LFP Vincent Labrune to inform him that his group would not participate in the current call for tenders for the rights television of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. “You have constantly penalized Canal + in the exploitation of its rights”, declares Saada, further accusing Vincent Labrune of wanting to fail the call for tenders launched on September 12 “to free itself from legal constraints” and then negotiate the rights in a discretionary manner directly with the American giant Amazon.
Saada estimates in particular that the floor prices set for the two lots of TV rights at stake (530 million euros for the main lot, with three matches per day including the first two posters, and 270 million euros for the other six matches) are too high to be honest. “In the absence of compensation for the damage suffered by Canal + and taking into account the total lack of transparency of your new award process, it therefore appears clearly that the conditions are not currently met for the Canal + group to file an offer on October 16 and 17,” he concludes.
“Insinuations of particular gravity”
If the withdrawal of the encrypted channel is confirmed, it would be the first time since its creation in 1984 that Canal + has not participated in a call for tenders to grant itself the rights to French football. All this could at first glance jeopardize the LFP’s billion-euro bet, the amount hoped for for the sale of these rights. Except that the League had anticipated the disaffection of its “historic broadcaster” as had already implied it Vincent Labrune in an interview with L’Equipe in June.
In a press release published in the afternoon, the LFP nevertheless regretted “the decision expressed by the Canal + group which it obviously never wanted. Canal + and its subscribers love French football as Mr. Saada’s letter reminds us and the League and the clubs have always considered Canal + as a strategic partner. Before becoming more threatening, to deny Saada’s accusations about a call for tenders destined to fail: “The assertions or insinuations contained in this letter are, moreover, particularly serious. As necessary, the LFP specifies that all the parameters of the call for applications have been established in strict compliance with the rules of the sports code and competition law.
Liar Poker
From there, what does the withdrawal of Canal + mean? We could see this as a simple maneuver intended to torpedo the call for tenders, Canal being an expert in thunderous declarations on football rights for three years. The desire: to lower prices, or simply to create disorder in the LFP project. Unless we only see a bit of bad faith here: Canal + never seems to have wanted to participate in this call for tenders, while relying on “friendly” broadcasters to collect them and then count them in its offer . A strong probability given the ambitions of the new kid DAZN, a sports streaming platform launched in 2015 in England and distributed since the summer by Canal +. Even from the Qatari group BeIn Sports, which could make an offer for the cheapest lot. The liar poker game has only just begun.
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