http://www.francefootball.fr/FF/breves2007/20070907_163902Dev.html Rights TV - 07/09/2007 Optimistic Aulas The president of the Olympic Lyonese, Jean-Michel Aulas, affirmed Friday that the rights of retransmission of League 1 over the period 2008-2011, which will be the subject of an invitation to tender in November, will not be "not lower than 750 million annual euros". "As one (the League of occupational football) has professionals who carry out this business, I think that one will not be lower than 750 million annual euros", explained the Rhone-native leader who also estimates that "foreign operators" could make their appearance on the market. On this new invitation to tender, the leaders of Canal Plus have however, on several occasions, assured which they would not pay 600 million euros, as they had done in 2005. Declarations which did not start the optimism of the president of the LFP, Frederic Thiriez, who stressed that Canal Plus needed "" L1. (With AFP)
thiriez is right that C+ needs L1... they do have some fine documentaries and other programmes, but these are not their hot sellers anyway, and are often either coproduced or made available to FranceTélévision or Arté the next year. as for movies you can rent them almost as soon as they're on C+. really, of 10 people I know who have la chaîne cryptée, 9 of them only got it for football.
Nothing against the football of smaller Central and South American countries, but I would be much happier if Gol TV picked up L1 instead of one or more of the above.
ligue 1 is probably as interesting a league to follow as the "big three", maybe even more interesting. there's something neat about watching the development of players like henry, ribéry, malouda (and dozens of others) in their formative years. i've seen a lot of big stars at gerland in all these years, and before they were worldwide household names. when i wore my OL jersey to chelsea-club america this summer at stanford, i got lots of knowing smiles and thumbs up... a lot more than i would have with a... yawn... chelsea, milan or barça shirt!
http://news.maxifoot.com/info-068142_70911/football.php Lyon: Aulas Uncovers Canal+ (11/09/2007) First concerned with the distribution of the rights TV, the president of the Olympic Lyonese, Jean-Michel Aulas, estimates that Canal+ will not be able to lower its expenditure at the time of the next invitation to tender for the diffusion of League 1. "It acts of a tactical speech. There are two more or three months to convince the shareholders and the subscribers of Channel + which should be put the price which it is appropriate for the championship. Is it to better have an exclusiveness paid a little expensive or than their Stock exchange price collapses? As one has professionals who carry out this business, one will have at least 750 per annum M, ensures Aulas. Everywhere in Europe, the rights go up. It will be similar in France. The more so as I know, me, which there is other candidates that Canal +, "it launched. (By Nicolas Lagavardan)
I think it's really important that the LFP stick to their guns regarding broadcasting rights. Football is getting more and more popular in France, and while L1 doesn't have as many watchers as in the other big leagues, football is still the most popular sport to watch in France. Canal+ would be dumb is they lost out on such a huge audience. I wonder though, is Aulas bluffing about other companies being interested in broadcasting L1?
I think if Canal + was really happy with the product then they would pay whatever it takes to retain the rights. They are clearly not happy with the current product probably because of the lack of entertaining matches(too many 0-0 draws), and the lack of star power overall. I cant say I blame them really. If this league had a decent amount of stars playing attractive football then Im sure Canal + would over pay to extend the rights. I think they dont feel they should pay over a certain amount for the current product on the field. Canal + probably feels that if they are gonna pay more than what they pay now, then they want more stars and more attractive football to justify the cost increase.
we may be unhappy with 0-0 draws, but C+ judges "the product" by the bottom line, and since they sell to the french market, and the french want to watch french football (even with C+'s world class crap analysts and announcers), it's a big moneymaker for them. JMA is not just any businessman, and he knows that without L1 their share price would take the mother of all swan dives. the 600M€ rights seemed excessive in 2003 but C+ couldn't afford to let anyone else (like TPS) get exclusive rights. it proved a very good move, and C+ eventually swallowed up TPS! even after that they simply can't do without L1... they have non-exclusive french rights to the other major leagues but they have competition there and anyway that's not what their subscribers want to watch.
LFP: Canal+ stops the expenses http://news.maxifoot.com/info-068623_70925/football.php I said that Canal + would pay whatever it took as long as the product on the field was good and since they arent happy with the product they dont wanna pay above a certain amount and I dont really blame them.
it's all just trash-talk before they get into the ring. they'll have to get some L1 because that's what their subscribers pay for... no one's cancelling C+ because of the "spectacle" they're supposedly not getting but if they can't give french fans their own league they'd better hire about 100 guys to open the rejection envelopes. C+ isn't cheap and no one's going to pay that for jour de foot and a spanish match. my guess is that if they let a free channel get even partial rights their income will plummet.
the basic is like 40€/month once the loss leader promos wear off... might not seem like a fortune but c'mon, it's only TV!
C+ is just the channel(s) right? It's not the entire cable package, correct? I remember the lady who I stayed with in Lyon had a lot of cable channels but I don't think she had C+?
Are there other broadcasters who would take on L1 if Canal+ doesn't? In Spain and Italy, the broadcasters negotiate deals with individual clubs. Any chance of that ever happening in France?
I think France is too socialized for that to happen. In the end, L1 is obviously much better off having a league-wide deal. If OL were able to get individual deals, then there would be way too large of a financial gap.
you don't even need cable to get C+; actually everybody gets it, and some programmes (notably les guignols de l'info) are not scrambled ("en clair")... the 40€ is for the decoder box to watch the rest. something interesting is that the prematch is en clair... you get some commentary, a few words from the coaches, see the players in the tunnel, and the kickoff... and then it goes all shimmyshake. but if you're listening to the match on the radio the scrambled picture is a useful accompaniment.
before C+ picked up exclusive rights, they were in fierce competition with a satellite company called TPS... which they eventually bought. and turned into CanalSat. so who would the competition be now? TNT channels to start with. 3 of them already broadcast football: only UEFA cup matches, and with limited means, but in a few years analog will disappear and the TNT channels will be fullfledged players on the paysage audiovisuelle... there's eurosport, kind of like a european ESPN, but still in the "U-21 WC cum tractorpull" stage... i don't know why they haven't become a bigger presence already, maybe some reason in jurisprudence. but the real possibilities are TF1, francetélévision and M6 ... the present analog networks. TF1 already splits CL rights with C+, FR2/3/4 has the rights to both cups, and M6 does some UEFA cup and had partial rights to last year's WC. After years and years of TF1's sunday morning highlight programme téléfoot having rights to L1/L2 images, the bidding between these 3 went to 25M€, with FranceTV winning. TF1 said that even the 19M€ they were paying was too high (just as C+ is saying for match rights) but they don't need football to stay in business... C+ does. especially with 8 new competitors (TNT) in the starting blocks.
you can interpret it as a kind of socialism, but it has nothing to do with the country being socialist (or not... which is another discussion). the country where professional sports are the most socialist.. is the US! and by far! you can't just start up your own MLB, NBA or NFL team. and i think NFL TV revenue is more evenly shared than L1's. and then there's the draft. and salary caps. even the websites are run communally... and why? because it's in everybody's interest to keep competition alive. a club can make an independant deal in france... OL has one with a local station! they show friendly matches, youth and women's fixtures, practices, do interviews, even rebroadcast L1 matches with their own commentary... but the live matches belong to the league.
as far as TLM is concerned i doubt it, it's local cable only. but what they broadcast is only a portion of the OLTV offered on olweb... i'm too much of a luddite to know if you can hook it up to your TV and get better than stream quality (our home comp is a 350mHz G3) but if i had more technology i'd go for it!
NFL TV revenue is basically like all 32 teams having TV deals that are as lucrative as Real Madrid's. The owners rigged the salary cap to ensure that all owners will make like 50+ million dollars in profit. This is partially why I don't really care for the NFL. I just can't see L1 allowing teams to have independent live matches TV rights. The bottom-feeders of the league would get like 3 mill euros a year while OL would probably command 50 million a year.
I know it would be terribly unfair if Lyon signed their own TV deal, and if L1 clubs had a tax break, etc, but still...it's hard not to wish for every advantage possible for Lyon to catch up to other clubs. I like the fact that L1 is a fair league, far better than the others, but sometimes I can't help myself I guess.
The best hope is that L1 can get a huge deal where everyone gets a ton of cash. I, too, want OL to have as much financial clout as possible, but only if the rest of the L1 teams do too. How great would it be if PSG and Marseille were able to buy high-quality names from Spain, Italy, etc? It'd go a very long way in legitimizing L1.
But the league won't improve that much unless it has both French and international talent a la the EPL, La Liga and Serie A.