French soccer’s LFP league organizer has secured a new multi-year rights agreement for its top-tier Ligue 1, with streaming service DAZN picking up the media rights to the competition in Spain.
DAZN will exclusively showcase every game from the top-flight competition, with two matches each week broadcast with Spanish-language commentary, starting this weekend with the crucial May 13 game between league leaders Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and second-placed Lens.
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Sportcal understands that this agrement will run for three seasons, through the 2028-29 campaign.
Spanish representation in Ligue 1 comes predominantly through Fabian Ruiz, the Spanish national team midfielder who plays for record champions PSG.
Other prominent Spanish names in the division include Monaco’s former Barcelona winger Ansu Fati, young PSG midfielder Dro Fernandez, and young Lille striker Matias Fernandez-Pardo.
DAZN, a former domestic broadcaster of Ligue 1, already holds the media rights to the competition in several international markets, namely: the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), Japan, and Belgium.
For the Spanish market in particular, this agreement ensures DAZN holds the rights to all of Europe’s so-called ‘Big Five’ leagues (the English Premier League, French league 1, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Spanish LaLiga) in the territory.
To say Ligue 1 has struggled to sell its media rights internationally in recent years would be an understatement, and indeed, this is the first time since the 2017-18 campaign that all nine Ligue 1 fixtures each week will be available in the Spanish market.
Even domestically, the league has struggled, and despite launching an in-house direct-to-consumer service (Ligue1+) at the beginning of 2025-26 that hosts 8 of the nine weekly matchups, broadcast revenue disbursements for Ligue 1 teams have plummeted year-on-year once again.
French publication L’Equipe reported that total domestic rights income from Ligue1+ across the 2025-26 campaign will total €170.1 million ($199.9 million), which, even though it is above projections, still lags far behind the other Big 5 leagues.
By comparison, domestic rights for Italy’s Serie A total €900 million per season, while Spain’s LaLiga, Germany’s Bundesliga, and England’s Premier League all generate over €1 billion per season.
This does not account for international media rights revenue, which for the LFP represents around €137.6 million.
Next season, even with a predicted 200,000 subscriber growth, LFP Media is pre-empting total revenues of €412.2 million in the 2026-27 campaign, of which major investor CVC Capital Partners will take around €65.5 million, while further costs and deductions mean a total of only around €184.1 million will remain to be disbursed across Ligue 1 clubs, heavily weighted in favor of those in European competition, by far the lowest of any Big 5 league.
Even with support from Ligue 1’s reserve fund, this result would, in turn, likely force the majority of Ligue 1 clubs into cost-cutting measures, which in turn further devalues the product for international audiences, maintaining the low media rights values.
Nicolas de Tavernost, the outgoing chief of the LFP Media commercial arm, said this week that piracy was a major factor in the low outcomes, stating that as much as €100 million each year is lost due to the practice.
While that may be, an addition of €100 million to the LFP’s annual pot in the form of 400,000 or so Ligue1+ subscribers would do little to draw it closer to the other Big 5 leagues, which are rapidly pulling away from Ligue 1 in the financial stakes.
Indeed, Ligue1+ 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 the LFP’s disastrous recent cycles.
The service launched in mid-July 2025 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.
