French football has plunged further into crisis after an emergency auction of TV rights ended without a suitable offer. The Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) has said it will decide upon a new approach for selling its rights by Wednesday night, with fears that clubs will struggle to pay their staff without the restoration of a crucial source of revenue.
Results of the auction were revealed on Monday night, after three bidders – Amazon, Discovery and DAZN – submitted offers that failed to match the reserve price sought by the LFP.
“Given that the reserve price has not been met, the consultations [bids] have been declared unsuccessful,” the league said. “The LFP gives itself 48 hours to define the next steps to take in the commercialisation of its rights.”
The failed auction is the latest blow to the LFP, which runs the top two divisions in French football, following the collapse of its existing TV rights deal in December. A deal struck in 2018 with the Spanish company Mediapro had secured a 60% increase on its previous arrangement, worth more than €1bn a year in total from the start of the 2020 season.
The offer proved too good to be true, however, and after Mediapro failed to make scheduled payments amounting to more than €300m four months into the arrangement, the LFP was forced to cancel the deal.
Mediapro then went to court to protect itself from its creditors, chief among them the LFP, before agreeing to pay the leagues €100m to relinquish the rights.
This enabled the new auction. Key to its failure was the absence from the bidding of Canal Plus and BeIN Sports, the two broadcasters who shared the rights under the previous contract.
On Tuesday French telecoms operator Free confirmed that it would continue to show league matches on its mobile phone service until the end of the season.
The front page of the sports paper L’Équipe gave a stark summary of the current situation with the headline: “48 hours to survive”.
