When the little yellow ball enters the world of Football. As the tennis season draws to a close, dozens of balls appeared this weekend on some Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 pitches. Originally, several groups of supporters, unhappy with the scheduling of matches of Ligue 2 by the Qatari broadcaster BeIN Sports but also certain decisions of the Professional Football League (LFP).
Friday evening, dozens of tennis balls landed on the pitch at the Bauer stadium during the match between Red Star and Troyes, causing the match to be temporarily interrupted. A way for supporters to protest, as they have been doing since the start of the season, against BeIN Sports' scheduling of matches on Friday evening. “Football is the weekend,” chant most fans of second division teams.
By throwing these tennis balls, the supporters want to show that they are still mobilized against this programming, but decide to show it in a more peaceful way. So no more lasers aimed at the BeIN Sports cameras as was the case at the start of the season. Since then, the channel has decided to broadcast two matches on Saturdays instead of one, sometimes three. Not enough for the supporters.
The next day, in Lens and Angers, same process. The little yellow balls reappeared on the lawns of the Bollaert and Raymond-Kopa stadiums during the matches against Nantes and Paris Saint-Germain. For their part, Ligue 1 supporters are especially angry with the LFP, as we can read on a Lens banner: “Your management is enraging the stands. Thank you LFP.” At the heart of the discontent, the closures of part or all of the stadiums as sanctions, the prohibited travel of supporters or even the salary of the president of the League Vincent Labrune.
In Angers, the match against PSG also had to be interrupted after tennis balls were thrown onto the pitch on Saturday evening. At the same time as this action, a banner “LFP, broadcasters, this is something to keep you busy for your next quick ideas” was deployed.
If this mode of action was particularly talked about in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 this weekend, it had already been used at the start of the season, for example during the Ligue 2 match between Metz and Bastia in mid-August . Already, the programming decided by BeIN Sports was at the heart of the fans’ anger.
Before this season, tennis ball throwers were used several times in Germany last season. The fans then wanted to protest peacefully against the contract concluded between the German Football League and foreign investors. In Norway, supporters used this process to demonstrate their opposition to the appearance of video refereeing in their championship.
