The major stakeholders in French soccer's top-tier have given the green light for Ligue 1 to create and develop an in-house TV channel to provide coverage for its matches.
Yesterday (July 1), the 18 Ligue 1 club presidents, the board of directors at the LFP league body, and the supervisory committee of the LFP Media arm, voted through the project.
The new channel - which, even in the last few days, has been a source of significant turmoil - will domestically cover eight of the nine Ligue 1 games per matchday exclusively from the start of the upcoming 2025-26 Ligue 1 season on August 15. The remaining match will be shown by international sports broadcaster BeIN Sport.
Subscriptions can initially be bought for €14.99 ($17.66) per month (well below what last season's primary domestic rightsholder DAZN was charging), the LFP has said, with that body essentially relying on strong sales to keep much of Ligue 1 financially afloat.
Currently, the standard DAZN service is available in France for a one-off monthly payment of €39.99, or as a yearly purchase (which works out as the equivalent of €29.99 per month).
The LFP has elected to move forward with an in-house Ligue 1 linear TV channel as the primary distributor of the competition’s main rights package, following the collapse of its broadcast partnership with DAZN, which covered eight fixtures per gameweek through a €325 million deal (while BeIN Sports aired with the other game, via a contract running through 2025-26).
Following the end of the BeIN-LFP deal, therefore, it is likely that this new channel will show every Ligue 1 match in 2026-27.
Costanza Barrai, senior media analyst at GlobalData, has commented on the long-term prospects for an in-house LFP channel, which represents another sports subscription option entering a crowded French market.
She said: "From the user's perspective, the LFP's decision to pursue an in-house streaming solution will fragment the viewing experience at a time when consumers are already experiencing subscription fatigue and are faced with issues associated with subscription stacking."
She added: "Creative content bundling and platform aggregation are being offered as appealing solutions to streamers and telcos to address the problem of churn, while Ligue 1 seems to be going in the opposite direction."
The approval also comes days after pay-TV heavyweight Canal Plus confirmed its withdrawal from negotiations around carrying the new channel.
Canal Plus reportedly tabled two offers to the LFP to host the channel, but then ended up stepping back from its attempts to strike an accord with the LFP, with the broadcaster’s char Maxime Saada eventually commenting: “We believe the conditions are not in place for Canal Plus to distribute the new Ligue 1 platform.”
He continued: “We are told that everything can be sublicensed, to a pay-TV broadcaster, to a free-to-air channel, at any time and at the discretion of the LFP… if you commit to selling a product at one price and the product is no longer the same afterwards, that’s a problem.”
Addressing Canal Plus withdrawing its offer, Barrai said: "It's unsurprising to see Canal Plus removing themselves from this unpromising deal given past experiences but also the almost-doubled proposed subscription price."
"Only if the channel can create a real unique selling point in areas such as tailored content, innovative features or interactive elements, could it find some success as a standalone service.
"The most likely scenario is that the LFP will be forced into re-evaluating its demands during negotiations."
The LFP had also been in talks with global sports subscription service DAZN on a prospective deal to host the service, but despite a June 15 deadline, no resolution has been reported.
Nicolas de Tavernost, general manager of LFP Media, has said, on this front: "We are in a multi-platform distribution mode. We are in negotiations with all the distributors, except for Canal+, which did not wish to continue discussions with us.”
He added that, in terms of subscription numbers: "We’d be disappointed with less than a million subscribers in the first year. We’ll put the resources in place to have a high-quality offering."
This confidence comes despite DAZN having attracted so few subscribers to its Ligue 1 coverage during the first few months of the 2024-25 season that in March, it began offering a three-month Ligue 1 match pass (up until the end of the campaign) to the first 120,000 fans who bought a meal from the McDonald's online delivery service - that fast food giant is the French league's title sponsor.
In late June, meanwhile, it emerged that L’Equipe-owned broadcast company 21 Production, and French media conglomerate Mediawan, were the two bidders that LFP Media will choose from in terms of handling production services for the in-house channel.
LFP Media launched the production tender at the beginning of June, seeking production companies to support its editorial content.
The creation of the channel stems from DAZN failing to pay multiple rights fee instalments due to the LFP, following the initial tie-up between the two parties signed at the eleventh hour last summer in advance of the 2024-25 Ligue 1 campaign.
Earlier this year, DAZN failed to pay half of a rights fee instalment of around €70 million that was originally due in January.
The streamer withheld €35 million worth of funds, citing challenging operational conditions, partly due to piracy issues and insufficient cooperation from certain clubs in promoting the Ligue 1 product and failing to provide editorial content. This then forced the LFP to take legal action against the broadcaster to receive the funds.
After mediation by the Paris Economic Activities Tribunal, DAZN finally paid the remainder of the funds it owed, of its January media rights fee, in late February.
Overall, the Ligue 1 media rights saga that engulfed the summer of 2024 - resulting in the DAZN and BeIN agreements - has been seen in hindsight as disastrous.
The LFP tanked its domestic broadcast rights outlook by overestimating the value of its package, resulting - for example - in 2024-25 marking the first time since 1984 that French broadcasting heavyweight Canal Plus did not air live Ligue 1 matches.
Now that DAZN has paid to end its deal early, the only guaranteed domestic media rights income for the LFP is the sum BeIN is paying for its one game per matchday - the new channel will succeed or fail depending on the initial uptake amongst French soccer fans.
As such, it is likely that for the 2025-26 season, many of the clubs (outside perennial champions Paris Saint-Germain) will be operating on severely reduced budgets.
