In order to save French football from the TV rights crisis it is going through, Daniel Riolo imagined the creation of a 100% football channel broadcasting all French competitions (L1, L2, L3, women’s, Cup, football teams). France young people). How much would it cost to set up such a channel? Would it be viable and useful to French football? We take stock.
The proposal launched by Daniel Riolo, Wednesday in After Foot on RMC, sparked a lot of reactions: that of launching, once the end of the DAZN era has been established, a 100% football channel bringing together all the ball competitions round in France.
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Or in detail: Ligue 1, Ligue 2, a possible Ligue 3 (currently National), as well as women’s football and the Cups (Coupe de France, Champions Trophy), even the French youth teams. “For this to happen, the FFF and the LFP would have to work together,” explained Riolo, also imagining a range of broadcasts of old matches and reports around French football added to this channel.
“It should not be a channel, but rather a platform”
The desired goal is to get French football out of its TV rights crisis in which it is entangled, at all levels of the football sphere. But would this really be a viable project? Gilbert Brisbois took part in the game and contacted pay television specialists: how much would it cost to set up such a project? “Already, they told me that it should not be a channel, but rather a platform, like DAZN,” he begins.
Before listing all the inherent costs. Starting with the production of all the matches in a season, which would cost 25 million euros for Ligue 1, 10 million for Ligue 2, 5 million for Ligue 3 and 5 million for women’s football, and 10 million for the Coupe de France.
-The creation of this platform would cost an additional 5 million euros, to which should be added technical support (5 million), editorial staff (10 million), a marketing department (1 million) and support to manage subscriptions ( 1 million). That’s a total budget of 77 million euros to produce an entire year of sport.
And how much would such a channel bring in?
Gilbert Brisbois then details the table of revenues generated by a unique 100% French football platform. By offering subscriptions at 20 euros (Daniel Riolo estimates that it would be necessary to go for 25 euros: “If you offer everything, all football, it could be worth it”), and this over the ten months of a season from football, we could imagine drawing 400 million euros in revenue. “Knowing that all the specialists tell you that you will never go above 2 million subscribers. This is the historic ceiling”, puts Brisbois in context.
By then reducing the 77 million implementation costs, this would make a gain of 323 million euros to then be redistributed to the clubs in television rights. An amount which is close to those received by the clubs when the DAZN-beIN Sports agreements were signed last summer. This was established around 500 million euros, from which numerous deductions from these gross amounts must be subtracted. For this season, CVC will normally take 20% in order to make up for the first two seasons where the investment fund had not taken anything from professional clubs. It could represent around 110 to 120 million euros for this championship season. Added to this, the Buffet tax (5% of rights) around 25 million euros and the various subsidies such as that paid to the FFF, which is at least 14 million euros, as well as to the various unions players, coaches or clubs. Ligue 1 clubs could therefore share between 300 and 350 million euros.
“But if you subscribe for 30 euros, at the end, you have 523 million left,” responds Gilbert Brisbois. “And there, you have a lot more than what you had in the last call for tender. To which you must also add international rights,” adds Daniel Riolo, who believes that this project “can begin to be studied seriously”.
Romain Daveau Journalist RMC Sport
