Ligue 1, the French top-flight soccer league, is looking for a financial windfall from American broadcasters similar to those received by England’s Premier League and Spain’s LaLiga.
BeIN Sports holds Ligue 1’s media rights in America, though the deal expires after the current 2023-24 season. The network, which previously held the rights to LaLiga’s and Italy’s Serie A in the U.S., has struggled to penetrate the American media landscape. Per the Sports Business Journal, it was available in just 9.5 million households in August compared to over 71 million for ESPN and FS1. For the league’s rights outside of France in various, BeIN is reportedly paying a total of $85 million annually.
In an effort to spark the interest of broadcasters, Ligue 1 is reportedly planning to bring “meaningful” matches stateside.
As a way to make its media rights package more attractive to U.S. media companies, the league plans to have its teams compete for trophies — akin to the French Cup or the French League Cup — in U.S. stadiums before U.S. crowds.
“We are going to be working with our future broadcast partner very closely in terms of bringing meaningful games to the U.S.,” said Ben Morel, CEO of LFP Media, which is the company that controls all commercial activities for the French league.
The timing for Ligue 1 to head to the market in the U.S. isn’t great, but it could be worse. Serie A’s media rights deal with CBS Sports expires after this season, and CBS is reportedly already “having conversations” about renewing the deal. LaLiga and the Premier League are locked in long-term with ESPN and NBC Sports, respectively, and the German Bundesliga has a deal with ESPN running through 2026. MLS is off the market thanks to its long-term global deal with Apple, and the NWSL has reportedly agreed to new media rights deals with four different companies.
Domestically in France, Ligue 1’s rights have been a headache for several years. At the end of 2020, the league’s multi-year deal with MediaPro collapsed, leading to Canal+ stepping in on an interim basis. Canal+ and Amazon acquired Ligue 1 rights in 2021, leading to a boycott from Canal+ that was eventually resolved. Those deals paid the league’s teams roughly half of what MediaPro was paying before the collapse.
The issues domestically could conceivably allow a company like Apple to swoop in on a global deal, much as it did with MLS.
While games in America might be a selling point for some companies, the future of Ligue 1’s rights will ultimately come down to how much a potential winning bid will cost. I can’t see an American media company breaking the bank for the league’s rights, especially given the uncertain future of superstar Kylian Mbappé in France.
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.