Mediapro proposes to provisionally follow the broadcast of French football

The Spanish group Mediapro, which you have agreed to relinquish your broadcasting rights with the French league (LFP), has proposed to the competition to continue broadcasting the matches beyond the deadline of January 31 and thus reach the end of the season if there is no workaround.

The channel Téléfoot, the Mediapro subsidiary created expressly for the dissemination of these rights, confirmed this proposal on Monday, which seeks to avoid a television “blackout” of the parties from February in case there is no company to replace you.

The Spanish company would continue the broadcast service until the end of the season and in return would receive the equivalent of Téléfoot's running costs and the production costs of the meetings, sources close to the negotiation specified. Some costs that, according to the figures that have circulated, they are in a range of 50 to 60 million euros per year.

Further, Mediapro is open to discussion if once the Professional Football League (LFP) is over, it considers that Téléfoot can continue. In that case, there are different possibilities, including the league taking control of that channel.

Now the key is that the conversations are resolved quickly. For the league, which in recent days has tried to set up a tender to award the rights that Mediapro had, the risk is to run out of diffuser after the “classic” between Olympique de Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain February 7.

Mediapro had achieved 80% of the broadcasting rights of the LFP for four seasons (2020-2024) for 814 million euros per year, a price much higher than what the clubs had received until then, in a contest in which the big loser was Canal +, a historical partner of French football.

However, the Spanish company stopped paying the 172.3 million of the term that corresponded at that time in October and at the beginning of December neither did it with the 152.5 million of the following.

Thus, he put pressure on the LFP because he considered that the operating conditions – and the possibility of making his investment profitable – had changed with the crisis caused by the pandemic. After several weeks of tension, a commitment was announced on December 11, in which both parties decided to break their contract.

The French league resigned to take Mediapro to court for breach, which for its part promised to pay compensation of 100 million euros and for Téléfoot to continue broadcasting, in principle until January 31.

Canal + appears potentially as the main interested in recovering the rights of the Spanish company, as a historical partner of French football, but has already warned that the price promised by Mediapro in the contract now broken was exorbitant.

At present, Canal + is the one who offers the matches of the remaining 20% ​​of those rights, which beIN Sports had acquired, and which has been subcontracted to them. Though It has also claimed that 20% be included in the tender that the LFP intended to launch.

The current situation has left in a very delicate position from the financial point of view to some clubs that had made investments counting on the income promised by Mediapro and that have also been hit by the drop in income due to the Covid crisis.