Louis-Philippe Neveu, general manager of TVA Sports, finds himself in hot water.
Appointed to head the station in November 2020 with a clear mandate to make it profitable, Neveu has spared no effort to get things back on track.
However, it is clear that his kingdom collapsed under the weight of debt, despite his ambitious vision and unwavering commitment.
At the time of his appointment, Neveu saw TVA Sports as a promising adventure for the channel’s artisans.
“The Canadian plays better, people get on board and are happy”he told Réjean Tremblay, proud of the audience peaks reached during the epic race towards the Stanley Cup in the middle of a pandemic, with peaks of more than a million viewers.
Building on these temporary successes, he had bet on live broadcasts, convinced that sport, unlike other television programmes, remained content that the public wanted to follow in real time.
By increasing the number of live events, with more than 200 hockey games broadcast this year, as well as acquiring rights for the Euro, Formula Electric, the Blue Jays and boxing, Neveu hoped to pull TVA Sports out of the quagmire.
But the reality of the Quebec market is merciless, and Neveu’s big mistake was perhaps to keep in office personalities whose influence on the audience had become negligible.
How can we justify the fact that Jean-Charles Lajoie, with such a little-watched show, is the channel’s highest-paid employee?
Or that growing criticism of Élisabeth Rancourt did not prompt her to be replaced by Frédérique Guay, whose popularity is enormous in Quebec?
These strategic choices, combined with considerable investments to “coach” his employees who are undesirable in the public eye, such as Félix Séguin and Patrick Lalime, have simply not borne fruit.
It must be acknowledged, however, that Neveu always thought big and never lacked audacity. His ambition and vision were probably better suited to a market like the United States, where he might have prospered.
In fact, his partnership with Tony Martinez, a renowned television talent coach in the United States, reflects this desire to push the boundaries.
Martinez, credited with transforming Tony Romo into a star analyst at CBS, was invited by Neveu to coach TVA Sports commentators with major communication weaknesses, such as Maxim Lapierre and Guillaume Latendresse, by teaching them precise techniques to captivate the audience in less than 24 seconds.
“I contacted Tony Martinez and he worked with our commentators. For example, he taught Maxim Lapierre and Guillaume to always state their main point in the first few seconds of a talk and to provide explanations afterwards. All within a 24-second window.” he told Réjean Tremblay in June 2021, when the journalist was working for the Journal de Montréal.
He worked with Félix Séguin and Patrick Lalime on the rhythm and timing of an analysis in the flow of a match. He is a very great talent coach and I am excited about his work with us.
Martinez also tried to put Félix Séguin and Patrick Lalime back on the right path. The effort is commendable, but the ratings did not follow. There are still just as many French speakers who prefer to listen to hockey in English on Sportsnet, rather than on TVA Sports.
Despite these efforts, the expected success never came, and Neveu’s grand projects ended in debt rather than profit.
Another area where Neveu was keen to make progress was gender equity on screen. Élisabeth Rancourt, Mélodie Daoust and Frédérique Guay have taken on increased responsibilities, a commendable initiative but one that Neveu says needs further development.
However, this approach, as well-intentioned as it may be, has not been enough to reverse the negative trend of recent years. Why? Simply because Quebecers have been asking for ages for Frédérique Guay to take Élisabeth Rancourt’s place, something that the CEO of TVA Sports has constantly ignored.
Louis-Philippe Neveu must now begin to account for himself. His ambitions for TVA Sports were great, but they ran up against the harsh realities of the Quebec market.
Perhaps he was too visionary for a province that was not ready for his grand projects, or perhaps he simply underestimated the forces in place, notably the fusion alliance between Bell and Molson which favoured RDS.
Regardless, Neveu, smiling despite the challenges, must now face the inevitable: his kingdom has collapsed, and he can no longer hide this failure behind the illusions of his past ambitions.
Louis-Philippe Neveu’s biggest mistake as CEO of TVA Sports was to place all his hopes in Jean-Charles Lajoie, deciding to live and die with him.
Neveu believed that Lajoie, despite his low ratings, could become the figurehead who would attract audiences and turn around the channel’s financial situation.
But in the end, Neveu lost everything with JIC. TVA Sports’ financial difficulties revealed how disastrous this strategic choice turned out to be.
Jean-Charles Lajoie, who receives an exorbitant salary of $400,000 per year, a figure he had inadvertently revealed during an intimate interview with journalist Alexandre Pratt, has become a symbol of the failure of TVA Sports.
In an environment where advertising revenue and subscriptions are plummeting, such compensation for a show that barely attracts an audience seems simply unsustainable.
“It’s not normal that in a company you have people paid $40,000 and others $400,000. Both are equally important, except for one principle: income.”Lajoie reminded La Presse, thus illustrating the paradox within the station.
JIC’s low ratings have caused a stir within TVA Sports, where anger is brewing. While the channel is laying off employees and facing colossal financial losses, keeping Lajoie on with such a disproportionate salary has sent shockwaves internally.
Already weakened by successive waves of layoffs, employees are wondering: how can they justify such a salary when Lajoie’s show is so little watched?
Worse still, Lajoie’s detractors point out that his famous public outing against regional residents during the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a fatal blow to the channel.
“The happy idiots in the region who do not feel concerned by the crisis and who are demanding deconfinement, I despise you”he said.
This release alienated a large part of the Quebec public, thus sealing the fate of TVA Sports.
Despite everything, Louis-Philippe Neveu continued to support Lajoie, influenced by their personal relationship. With of course the unlimited support of Pierre-Karl Péladeau.
Let us recall that the head of Quebecor and Lajoie share paths marked by personal challenges, which partly explains why Péladeau remained loyal to Lajoie despite internal criticism and financial losses.
Péladeau, who himself overcame a difficult childhood and strained relationship with his father, sees in Lajoie a reflection of his own difficult childhood.
This emotional connection explains why he never questioned Lajoie’s presence, even to the detriment of TVA Sports’ profitability.
In this context, Neveu should have had the courage to tell Péladeau that Lajoie had to be shown the exit door.
Because this loyalty to Lajoie has serious consequences for TVA Sports. Since its creation, the channel has never been profitable, with accumulated losses of $242 million since 2011.
In 2023, TVA Sports has lost another 9% of its subscribers, and financial losses are accumulating dangerously.
As the end of the NHL’s exclusive broadcast contract in 2026 approaches, the future of TVA Sports is more uncertain than ever.
Some experts even suggest last resort solutions, such as a partnership with Bell or Rogers to share broadcasting costs.
For Neveu, who has staked his entire strategy on Lajoie, it is a bitter failure. Despite his ambitions and efforts, the channel is sinking under the weight of debt.
Meanwhile, Lajoie continues to pocket his $400,000 a year, a figure that seems unreal in a context where so many employees have been laid off.
For these employees, the special relationship between Neveu, Péladeau and Lajoie is incomprehensible and unfair. They feel betrayed, seeing in Lajoie a beneficiary of his personal friendships that allow him to keep his job, despite mediocre performance and a plummeting audience.
The fall of Jean-Charles Lajoie embodies the contradictions and internal tensions that are eating away at TVA Sports. Neveu, who had the mandate to make the channel profitable, failed by placing all his hopes in a figure who failed to meet expectations.
Louis-Philippe Neveu is a leader who has clearly put all his energy and ideas at the service of TVA Sports.
His intentions were legitimate: to make the channel a key player in sport in Quebec, with dynamic and innovative programming.
He sought to turn things around with ambitious initiatives, strategic partnerships and substantial investments in live broadcasting and its “talents”, to the point of calling on Tony Romo’s coach to train the Séguins, Lalimes, Latendresses and Lapierres of this world.
Unfortunately, in his quest to save TVA Sports, he lost his way, banking on personalities like Jean-Charles Lajoie and projects that never really found their audience.
Neveu does not listen to his audience. Otherwise, Lajoie would not have been there for a long time and Frédérique Guay would have become a main and essential figure of the channel for a long time.
In seeking at all costs to transform the channel into a rapid success, he neglected economic realities and the expectations of Quebec viewers.
Despite his efforts and his vision, he was unable to prevent the financial collapse of TVA Sports.
His biggest mistake was not readjusting his strategy… before it was too late…
