Mediawan, the French media group, has been brought on board as the chosen production partner for the new broadcast channel that will cover French soccer's top-tier Ligue 1 domestically next season.
The firm has been appointed over 21 Production, owned by L'Equipe, in securing this contract. A deal has been signed with LFP Media, the media division of French club soccer's governing body.
LFP Media launched the production tender at the beginning of June, seeking production companies to support its editorial content - with four rights packages available - while the LFP will handle match production in-house.
However, the hunt is still on for broadcasters to carry this new channel - at the time of writing, no such deals had been struck.
LFP Media has said that Mediawan secured the contract as its "project matches the ambition of the LFP Media teams."
Mediawan's sporting experience includes the production of documentary content around prominent French sports stars such as Rudy Gobert and Antoine Griezmann, as well as events like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and it owns France’s Golf Channel network.
Recently, it was also announced as the producer of a new film and documentary series from Amazon MGM Studios around the iconic Isle of Man TT motorcycle race.
Earlier in July, the main stakeholders across top-tier French soccer gave the green light for Ligue 1 to create and develop an in-house TV channel to provide coverage for its matches.
On July 1, the 18 Ligue 1 club presidents, the board of directors at the LFP league body, and the supervisory committee of LFP Media voted through the project.
The new channel 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 Sports.
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.
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 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.
In terms of distribution, earlier in July, French 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 chair Maxime Saada eventually commenting: “We believe the conditions are not in place for Canal Plus to distribute the new Ligue 1 platform.”
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.
Overall, the Ligue 1 media rights saga that engulfed the summer of 2024 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 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.
