French soccer’s LFP league organizer has scored another legal win against its broadcast partners, this time against pay-TV heavyweight BeIN, which will now have to pay the body €14.13 million ($16.85 million).
That €14.13 million fee represents money that BeIN had been withholding from the LFP Media commercial subsidiary in this year’s media rights payments (around €4 million from each €18 million instalment) owing to an ongoing dispute over broadcast pick preferences.
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This ruling was issued by the Paris Commercial Court, which dismissed all of BeIN’s claims, but did leave the door open for the broadcaster to appeal.
BeIN holds the rights to one top-tier Ligue 1 match per gameweek through the current 2025-26 campaign in a deal worth €78.5 million per year, but has been withholding the money from each instalment in protest of the conditions attached to its coverage of the Saturday 5 pm fixture
This includes the condition that it cannot show the same team more than eight times per season, or twice in a row, and also that it has to alternate between the first and second pick of games for each matchday.
In response, a BeIN spokesperson told Sportcal (GlobalData Sport): “We take note of the initial first-instance decision of the Court and will, of course, immediately study all options for appeal.
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By GlobalData“This case was brought as a matter of principle, to defend contractual loyalty and protect BeIN Sports from conduct that has been harmful and inconsistent with the spirit of our long-standing partnership with LFP Media.
“LFP Media’s persistent refusal to engage constructively with our legitimate and reasonable concerns – including rejecting all mediation – has compelled us to take this action. The issues raised are serious and deserve to be examined.
“The fact that LFP Media is regularly in court against current and former broadcast partners – the main source of income for clubs – unlike any other major league in football, speaks for itself and the current perilous financial predicament.”
The LFP has been embroiled in a myriad of legal disputes in recent years, most prominently with its own broadcasters BeIN and (formerly) Canal+ and DAZN, most recently defeating Canal+ and BeIN in a dispute over a 2021 broadcast contract handed to Amazon Prime Video.
Although the LFP has taken over rights previously held by DAZN to launch its in-house broadcaster Ligue 1+ this year – boasting strong initial success – if the league were ever to seek a return to linear broadcast, poor relations with the country’s most dominant TV platforms could hamper any efforts to grow media rights values, especially since it will also take over BeIN's rights at the end of the season, consolidating all Ligue 1 games on the platform.
The service launched in mid-July at a price point of €14.99 ($17.66) per month for an annual subscription, or a non-committal monthly tier at $19.99 per month.
Back in September 2025, it was reported that of the service's (then) 1.026 million subscribers, 72% have committed to the annual package as opposed to the rolling monthly commitment, which accounts for about €132.9 million per year from the around 738,000 annual subscribers, again a strong early indicator but far from making up for the rights shortfall.
This may become a more pressing issue as, despite Ligue 1+’s early success, the service may need to triple, or even quadruple its current subscriber base, or drastically increase its subscription price, to match the media rights income from even its disastrous recent cycles.
In the 2024-25 campaign, the annual value of the LFP’s domestic deals with DAZN and Qatar-based broadcaster BeIN Sports last season was around €400 million.
All this comes amid a backdrop of Ligue 1's competitors across Europe, the German Bundesliga, for example, posting record revenues.
In the recent Deloitte Football Money League table, the likes of England, Spain, Germany, and Italy all had three or more clubs ranked in the top 20 globally for revenue, while Ligue 1 had just one, Paris Saint-Germain (wealthy outwith domestic media rights income), illustrating the growing financial gap between French soccer and Europe's other elite competitions, a gap exacerbated y the ongoing media rights struggles.
