Vincent Labrune, the president of the Professional Football League (LFP), recently made it clear that there will not be Ligue 1 on Apple TV+. But Apple would not have abandoned the idea of obtaining broadcasting rights, at least internationally.
There was an approach in November 2023 as a simple first contact. Today, RMC Sport claims that new exchanges have taken place between Apple and the LFP for the rights to Ligue 1. These would at least be international rights. Apple is looking for the right strategy to acquire matches in the French championship, for a set of territories including the United States.
Nothing has been signed as of yet, but the LFP knows that an agreement with Apple could be more than important from a financial point of view. But doubts exist about Apple’s ability to find the right “business plan” on time. Indeed, we must put together the file while knowing that the football competition will resume in August for the 2024-2025 season.
In France, there is still no broadcaster to this day. We are reaching a stage where the LFP is considering a 100% Ligue 1 channel where all the matches of the French competition would be broadcast for… €30/month. In comparison, the main broadcaster (80% of matches) until now was Amazon. The price was €12.99/month, knowing that you had to be a subscriber to Amazon Prime.
