Did you miss the Mediapro circus? Rest assured, the spectacle of French football TV rights continues. Indeed, according to The team, the beIN Sports channel, co-broadcaster of Ligue 2, has not paid its first payment for the 2021-2022 season, expected on July 1 by the LFP. Some 7.5 million euros were expected by the League, three weeks before the resumption of the second division (July 24), of which two games per week are supposed to be broadcast by the Qatari group in exchange for 30 million euros per year until 2024.
But the decision of French football to entrust 80% of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 to the e-commerce giant Amazon, at the beginning of June, disrupted the market, offending the historic broadcaster Canal + and its ally beIN Sports. If the encrypted channel, still holding two L1 matches per week under the contract after the 2018 call for tenders, immediately retorted by means of a press release that it intended to “withdraw” from the broadcasting of Ligue 1 , the Qatari channel had not publicly expressed its position on the matter.
Canal and beIN allies in this liar poker against the League
With this deadline not settled for the moment, beIN Sports seems to adopt a position close to Canal +, its ally in this thorny issue, while the deadline for the first payment of TV rights for the Ligue 1 season is set for August 5. An appointment that the Vivendi subsidiary could also refuse to honor, which would place the LFP without a broadcaster for 20% of its matches.
Canal and beIN must respectively pay 330 and 30 million euros annually to broadcast two matches of L1 and L2 per day, against 250 million euros (L1) and 9 million euros (L2) for Amazon for the eight remaining matches. of the two divisions. In early June, Amazon recovered the rights left vacant by the failing Sino-Spanish broadcaster Mediapro, which had promised more than 800 million euros annually to French football before withdrawing, prompting the LFP to urgently issue a new appeal. offers.