In an interview given to Le Parisien given this Thursday, the president of the LFP Vincent Labrune defended his results and declared that he wanted “the success of DAZN at all costs”.
The president of the Professional Football League Vincent Labrune declared his wish “the success of DAZN at all costs”, while recognizing that the broadcaster has “maybe made a mistake by hitting the prices a little hard at the start”in an interview with Le Parisien broadcast on Thursday. DAZN “achieved the feat of launching a product in less than two weeks without any bugs or black screens. Then yes, they may have made a mistake by hitting the prices a little hard at the start. But we all learn as we go. We are fully behind them,” underlined Mr. Labrune, re-elected in September at the head of the LFP despite the TV rights fiasco.
After promising to obtain one billion euros per season, the LFP had to swallow its ambitions and sell L1 matches for an annual total of around 500 million euros to DAZN and beIN Sports. The former president of OM clarified that the League had no right to review the price of the subscription to DAZN, launched at the annual rate of 29.99 euros per month: “This would have been the case if we had been overwhelmed by offers,” he explained. If he did not want to give “a figure” on the number of subscribers to the British platform, he admitted that they are not “not up to par” forecasts, in particular due to piracy which according to him concerns two out of three Ligue 1 viewers.
Labrune defends his record
“It’s extremely serious. It is the most pirated product in France. We need radical decisions”he estimated. Asked about the distrust towards him, Vincent Labrune defended his results: between 2020 and 2023, he estimates “having saved French football from the most serious crisis in its history”notably thanks to the agreement with the CVC investment fund. Concluded in April 2022, this agreement was designed to bring a total of 1.5 billion euros to French professional football, in exchange for 13.04% of its lifetime income for the investment fund. “There hasn’t been enough dialogue between CVC and the clubs,” he nevertheless admitted. A problem solved thanks to the “establishment of a strategic committee between CVC and the clubs which is operating at full capacity”he said, emphasizing that he had “been the object in the space of a year of attacks of exceptional violence”.
