“Heist of the Century”. This is how the prestigious French sports newspaper appears on the cover L’Equipe in its edition tomorrow, Saturday, December 12. The French newspaper caricatures Jaume roures, President of Mediapro, as one of the characters in the famous television series The Paper House after his company and Ligue 1 have definitively broken the French football broadcasting contract that he had signed until 2024.
According “L’Équipe”, The Spanish company will pay the league 64 million when the agreement is validated by the justice and another 36 in the first half of 2021. That compensation is added to the 172 million that he paid last August as soon as the contract began.
The group of Roures He had not paid two terms of the contract: 172.3 million on October 5, and 152.5 million on December 5, which put the clubs in a serious financial situation. The French courts, which then ordered mediation to open, must now validate the terms of the breach of the contract.
The news puts an end to Mediapro's adventure in France, where it signed a contract of more than 800 million euros per year for 80% of the broadcasting rights of the league for three years, a historic figure that placed French football among the best valued on the continent, only surpassed by English, according to the EFE agency.