LFP Media, the media division of French club soccer’s governing body, has launched a tender to find a production partner for its new in-house channel that will cover its top-tier Ligue 1 for the 2025-26 season.
According to French sports news outlet L’Equipe, LFP Media is seeking production companies to support its editorial content, while the LFP will handle match production in-house.
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Specifically, four separate packages have been introduced to the market, covering magazine program production, pre- and post-match production, multiplex coverage, and editorial staff management.
To achieve this, the league will have to partner with a major domestic player, namely pay-TV broadcasters Canal Plus, BeIN Sports, Amazon, and Disney, as well as former rights partner DAZN, the global sports streaming service that prematurely ended its deal with LFP earlier this year.
L’Equipe said that based on the responses to the tender, LFP Media will decide on the level of in-house production that will take place versus what will be handled by external companies.
LFP Media, meanwhile, will handle match production in-house, with the launch of the new channel scheduled for August 15 – the date the Ligue 1 2025-26 season starts.
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By GlobalDataThe tender comes days after LFP and DAZN extended the deadline for talks over launching the potential channel together after negotiations stalled.
The deadline was due to expire on May 31, but will continue until June 15.
The streaming giant is keen to retain a partnership with the LFP after terminating its five-year domestic rights contract for Ligue 1 after just one season.
At the time of the termination (May 1), DAZN believed it is best placed to support the league in its plans to launch an in-house channel next season adding: “The league may have other options, although we believe the right decision would be to go ahead with this channel project with DAZN.”
DAZN had originally picked up five-season domestic Ligue 1 rights – eight matches per week, out of the nine in total from the 18-team league – just before the start of the 2024-25 season.
Overall, the annual value of the LFP’s domestic deals with DAZN and Qatar-based broadcaster BeIN Sports last season was around €400 million ($453.2 million).
However, since then, DAZN has regularly withheld rights money from the LFP, citing a variety of factors, including the LFP failing to take necessary measures against digital piracy, which forced the body to take legal action against DAZN to eventually secure the funds.
This eventually led to mediation between the two parties, which in turn resulted in an eventual agreement that the DAZN-LFP tie-up would be terminated at the end of 2024-25, after just one campaign.
Vincent Labrune, president of the LFP, has previously said, on the subject of the league launching its channel: “We have to move forward on our own.”
Over the last half-decade or so, the major soccer leagues in Europe have all been mulling over the right way in which to launch their own channels or streaming services – as yet, none have done so for a domestic audience.
Overall, the LFP domestic media rights saga that engulfed the summer of 2024 was disastrous, and as many as eight second-tier Ligue 2 clubs were said to have been at risk of bankruptcy had a deal not been reached.
The LFP tanked its domestic broadcast rights outlook by overestimating the value of its package, resulting in this season marking the first time since 1984 that French broadcasting heavyweight Canal Plus is not airing live Ligue 1 matches.
In terms of DAZN's concerns over piracy, meanwhile, an LFP-backed report late last year seemed to back up its concerns, as it was found that 37% of those who had watched Ligue 1 action during the first few months of 2024-25 had done so illegally.
