The LFP, French soccer’s top-tier league structure, has launched a tender for the international media rights to the country’s top two divisions, as well as its annual Trophée de Champions, covering either three or five seasons.
The league announced it will offer rights for the 2024-25 to 2026-27 seasons or 2024-25 to 2028-29, with the latter matching its recently released domestic five-year rights tender.
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The new cycle length is being offered after the LFP was granted permission by the French government to extend contracts from four to five seasons earlier this year.
The rights tender covers the top-tier Ligue 1 and second-tier Ligue 2, as well as the Trophée de Champions, the annual match between the Ligue 1 champions and winners of the Coupe de France domestic competition.
Interested broadcasters and agencies have been invited to submit offers for global, regional, or country-specific rights over three and five seasons, with documents to be sent to mediarights@lfpmedia.fr by 3pm CEST on November 2.
The inclusion of global offers opens the potential for another ‘all-in’ agency rights deal despite Italy’s top-tier Serie A moving away from that model.
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By GlobalDataBeIN, the international pay-TV broadcaster, currently holds international rights to Ligue 1 as part of a six-year contract running from 2018-19 to 2023-24, worth an average €80 million (now $84.1 million) per season. Under its deal with LFP, revenues are shared between the league and the broadcaster on a 50-50 basis once the minimum guarantee thresholds are met.
The broadcaster first secured Ligue 1 international rights in 2012-13, succeeding previous distributor Canal Plus Events. BeIN then hired the MP & Silva agency to sell the rights across international markets.
The LFP is aiming to generate €200 million per season for its international rights – a high figure considering the loss of marquee players Lionel Messi and Neymar from league champions Paris Saint-Germain since the last cycle.
This will be the LFP’s first international broadcast rights sales process since agreeing a commercial partnership with private equity group CVC Capital Partners last year.
Through the tie-up, CVC acquired a 13% stake worth €1.5 billion in a media rights subsidiary set up by the LFP – LFP Media – that will market the TV and online broadcast rights for Ligue 1.
In an interview with L’Equipe in June, LFP president Vincent Labrune said the league is seeking a total of €1 billion for its domestic and international media rights.
