French football, pirates and tyrant
By Nicolas Guillon
The inability of French professional football to secure its economic model, and first of all its television diffusion rights, says a lot about the inanity of its governance, which certain witnesses do not hesitate to compare to a mafia system. The legislator moved from it and calls for in depth a model at the center of which the omnipotent boss of Paris Saint-Germain and BeIN Sports Nasser al-Khelaïfi is making the rain and the good weather, in defiance of the conflicts of interest.
“The subscription to official broadcasters is essential for the budget of French clubs. So for our hopes, for our educators, for our champions, for the love of the jersey, and to sing, vibrate, celebrate together, say stop in piracy. To subscribe to a legal offer is to win your club and all French football. For a few weeks, the Professional Football League (LFP) and the eighteen L1 clubs have been broadcasting this message on specialized channels and social networks.
Is that the time is serious. “French football is at the foot of the wall, alerts the president of the Commission for the Culture, Education, Communication and Sport of the Senate, Laurent Lafon. Unhappy decisions threaten its financial model and its governance model. It is a drunk boat which sails at the whim of the wind and which, if nothing is done, risks stiff. In fact, the L1 championship, which supposedly was worth a billion, has seen its rating melt with broadcasters (its main source of income) at the same time as its sporting interest was reduced to nothing by Qatari despotism.
So, facing the iceberg which is dangerously closer, the captain of the Titanic made a decision: asking the orchestra to continue playing as if nothing had happened. Far from tackling the real problems and their recurrence, the communication operation, in accordance with the LFP lucidity strategy, points to a scapegoat: the ugly supporters who, to live their passion, refuse to multiply paid subscriptions (Dazn and beIN Sports for L1 and L2, Canal + for European cuts)-and incidentally thicken the pockets of Blavatnik (small telegraph of Benyamin Netanyahu through the Israeli television channel 13), a Nasser al-Khelaïfi or a Vincent Bolloré. Between two and three million viewers legally follow the European adventures of PSG, when they were more than six million in front of TF1 Po
Nicolas Guillon
Journalist