French Soccer Faces Financial Crisis After MediaPro Pulls Plug

The record-setting television deal was, in hindsight, far too good to be true.

The billion euros the upstart media company had promised to pay to televise French soccer matches each year represented an increase of 60 percent on the league’s previous television deal, and much more than any other bidder had offered. It was a sum so large — about $1.2 billion a year — that it led officials from the league and the club executives on its board to ignore obvious warning signs; to brush aside the fact that the company making the offer, MediaPro, had no history in French soccer; and to close an agreement without the type of bank guarantees that might have ensured that all that money would eventually arrive.

And then the deal simply vanished.

Last week, arbitration talks between the Ligue de Football Professionnel (L.F.P.), the governing body for professional soccer in France, and MediaPro, a Spanish broadcaster now controlled by Chinese interests, ended with the company handing back the four years of rights under its control and less than a third of the more than 300 million euros it owes for games this season.

The resolution has left league officials frantically searching for a new television partner, and teams facing a very different financial future.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/sports/soccer/LFP-mediapro-telefoot-ligue-1.html