In an interview given to ParisianVincent Labrune returned to the beginnings of the DAZN platform. For him, the platform “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 the president of the LFP, 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.
“Piracy? It’s extremely serious”
If he didn’t want to givenumber” on the number of subscribers to the British platform, he admitted that they are “not up to par” forecasts, in particular due to piracy which according to him concerns two out of three Ligue 1 viewers. “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“, in particular 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 his lifetime income for the investment fund.
“There has not 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 operates at full capacity“, he said, emphasizing having “been the subject in the space of a year of attacks of exceptional violence“.
