More or less but the league have always played hard to get with them so they're getting a bit tired of going after PSG games that they're aren't able to broadcast in France (whereas they've been broadcasting them in more important areas in the world namely MENA). Since arriving on the market, BeIn has only very rarely had the rights for a PSG/OM for instance so it's wait and see. For Ligue 2 it's different. BeIn have had the rights for ages, have the right personel to broadcast the games (commentators, pundits, etc.), it's cheaper and the competition is non-existant. 6 weeks till the start of the season. Clock is ticking...
Utterly delusional and wishful thinking. I read $27 per month streaming fee in USA. Nobody but the most diehard French footie fan! I mean, for Serie A it’s $6 per month via Paramount+ and you get all its other services. For $9 per month you get Bundesliga and La Liga (& a few Eredivisie and Jupiler league matches) via ESPN+ plus all its other goodies. To pay $27 a month for Ligue 1…feggedaboudit… Have the Powers That Be been discussing any down-the-road plan to consider any “Super League Lite” with the top clubs (and largest cities) from, say, France, Belgium, and Netherlands creating such entity? The “Big Four” could draw lessons from such enterprise to determine if any future changes might be advisable within the Major Arteries of Euro Football?
Surprised Bordeaux aren't on this list, FSG are trying to acquire them, thought they may be financially weak like LFC were when they took over. Pretty soon it's gonna be PSG vs a load of Europe's feeder clubs. Strasbourg have already been chewed up by Chelsea. Sad times.
Very sad times. The demise of top-level football is really coming to a head in recent times. The money and greed is killing the game and total reform is needed (I sound like a UK politician!). In hindsight, perhaps the Super League wasn’t a bad thing after all.
Apparently Bordeaux have been provisionally relegated to Ligue 3 for financial reasons... FSG are promising to take over as majority shareholders and provide funding to save that that from happening. So they'll be buying in at a bargain price no doubt, makes sense now. Thought they'd likely be a sitting duck for acquisition. One more French club in financial trouble.
One could say much the same for the top North American leagues, but at least we have either salary caps (gridiron football, basketball, ice hockey) or revenue sharing (baseball). And at least here, we are in essence “Super League” in that only large cities are in the top league. (Minor leagues are the place for squads from, say, Bakersfield CA or Topeka KS or Harrisburg PA.). But in Euro football, you have the equivalent of, say, the New York Yankees playing in a league with the Gary (Indiana) Southshore Railcats! This “market value” chart for Ligue 1 could be done for the other big leagues too, and it will become more accurate as clubs fill out their rosters for the coming season… …but it does beg the question of why they are all in the same league? What chance do Montpellier or Strasbourg have? (Ditto Italy, how can Udinese or Parma or Venezia truly compete with such wealth disparity in Serie A?)
I saw that as an opportunity for big clubs to stop giving money to UEFA and share the wealth between themselves. Reckon Perez & co will come back with a similar project in the near future and this time it will pass. Big clubs will play every week instead of once a year and novelty will utimately wear off. I don't mind, it will leave us non-armchair fans with games to go to at a reasonable price! Bordeaux have been in financial trouble for 15 years and have changed shareholders on countless occasions. FSG buying them saves them from N1/L3 but doubt it will solve all their problems. The club is in complete disarray and needs promotion back to the top flight asap to start fresh.
News of the crisis is making a few headlines over here. Yesterday, The Athletic (now the sports section of the New York Times) penned an article titled: ‘We must hope for a miracle’: How a failed TV deal has put France’s Ligue 1 in crisis mode” Amongst its more interesting tidbits - Senior figure of a major broadcaster speaking anonymously: “It’s a national scandal. It’s huge, huge news for the industry. An incoming shipwreck that is just about to hit the rocks and people don’t seem to realise what’s happening.” Such fun. Here’s another: President of Le Havre AC: “We are sure of nothing. We must hope for a miracle.” It continues with the history of the league (LFP) pissing Canal+ off in 2018, and that now, neither they nor BeIN nor Amazon plan to make offers. DAZN still might. (I don’t think any of this is news for French readers.) It clarified what I read elsewhere a few days ago: the potential LFP direct-to-consumer deal would include the HBO offerings. I take it that means for France. I get the newly rebranded “Max” here in USA (HBO, Cinemax, Discovery Channel, sports from Turner Broadcasting), but the article did not say whether Ligue 1 would get added to that mix. The article ends with some quotes from a couple of Ligue 1 club executives, to the gist of “things are really bad.”
DAZN & BeIn should team up to offer the league 500M€. Something like that. Labrune (LFP president) must have had a gun to his head to say yes. Where are the corsican clubs when you need them?
Unless DAZN hugely lower their USA streaming fees, I’ll be reduced to the one weekly match on BeIN Sports. (But as long as BeIN continue to provide the weekly Ligue 1 highlight show, I’m OK with that.)
It's not right that it happens to smaller clubs either but football should never be in a position where one of the biggest clubs in the country is going bust. They've played Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool in European competition which shows how drastically things can change because of a change in ownership.
Ok, serious shit has been happening over the past 2 weeks. For Ligue 1, DAZN have indeed teamed up with BeIn but have come up with a ludicrous offer of 50€/month for French football! No one is going to pay that of course so they may withdraw sooner than later and the merry go round of who wants to put money in French football will resurface once again. The answer being: "oh, that's right! No one!" As said above, I'm perfectly happy attending PSG home games and giving riveting snoozefests at Brest & Angers a miss. No way am I paying more than I am just to witness French football (and I like and defend domestic football but this is just not the right way to go about it). In Ligue 2, BeIn bought 100% of the rights for 40M€ per season. Great, wonderful news. I like them as a network, they have good, passionate commentators & pundits BUT they unfortunately decided to put 7 games out of 9 on a Friday evening (8pm KO) which is a downer for match-going fans (I much prefer to attend games on a Friday evening than a Saturday evening but that's me). Thing is L2 was on Friday evenings a decade ago and nobody seemed to bat an eyelid but now most ultra groups of L2 clubs are calling to boycott support during home games (that won't last), are asking the clubs to reimburse their ST and are vehemently pleading that the whole world boycotts BeIn as a network (which I don't particularly agree with as they show more or less all european football except CL & the Prem, 2 competitions I'm not that keen on). Last but not least, Bordeaux were denied a stay in the 3rd tier (National 1) but the worst part is that the FA (who run football divisions countrywide except for the top two divisions) did call back a club up so this means division 3 has 17 teams participating in it and it's not the first time in history this happens. This means that on every single matchday, one side won't be playing because of uneven numbers. This really pisses me the hell off. That networks charge silly money for a sport that is so knee-deep in corruption I can understand but not sorting the divisions before it starts really does my ****ing head in. Oh and to top it all off, the FA (yes, those ****s again) have decided that the Coupe de France round of 32 will be in midweek (which it wasn't last season). Really can't wait to get in my car en route to Aachen to go to a proper football country. Rant over.
Sorry to hear that with Girondins. A club steeped in tradition. I don't know the background of all this but it's sad to hear. I remember German Gernot Rohr playing for Girondins together with, imo, one of the legends Alain Giresse. We had much respect for the "power dwarf". He together with Michel Platini for France that was frightening. I'll never forget the legendary (as well as infamous) match at the World Cup 1982, the "Night of Sevilla" where both tortured us fans, especially when Giresse made the 3-1 in the 99th minute we thought all is over (it wasn't though as we know ). What a game and what a player. You'll watch Alemannia Aachen in the Cup against Bundesliga side Holstein Kiel (still not familiar with Kiel in the 1.Buli ) ? I hope you have a good time and that it will be a cracker match. Aachen is already active in 3.Liga whereas Kiel still has to wait for the 1.Buli to start.
Meanwhile, less that 72 hours before the Friday opening match, there is still no Ligue 1 broadcast contract for USA…at any price. (Or for UK and Canada, based on the source I use to track these things.)
I knew if I mentioned this, that the Great Football Powers of the Universe would solve it. Indeed, "late on Tuesday", USA and Canada broadcast rights were established. But not UK, Spain, and Italy as yet. Unlike France, there is no DAZN involvement for USA and Canada; it is all beIN Sports. (Yay, no extra fees for me,) Ligue 1 returns to beIN SPORTS for start of 2024/25 season
