PARIS: British platform DAZN and Qatari channel beIN Sports have acquired the TV rights to French football’s top-flight Ligue 1 for at least the next two seasons, a source close to the negotiations told AFP on Sunday.
The financial commitment is reported to be close to 500 million euros ($544 million) annually for domestic broadcast rights, while international rights will fetch a further 160 million euros plus 40 million for the second-division Ligue 2.
There remain a number of details to hammer out before the agreement, which is due to run for the period 2024-2029, is made official — including an exit clause for DAZN and France’s Professional Football League (LFP) in two years’ time.
The division of matches between the sports streaming platform and the Qatari channel is also yet to be finalized, although DAZN is expected to broadcast eight of the nine matches in each round, while beIN would get the primetime game.
The larger picture of the agreement was validated by the chairmen of Ligue 1’s clubs during an LFP board meeting on Sunday.
“Despite an incredible amount of work by (LFP chair) Vincent Labrune and several other chairmen, including myself, we were at an impasse, given the urgency of the situation,” Jean-Pierre Caillot, chairman of Reims and chair of the Ligue 1 board, told AFP.
“We had to find the best solution for the clubs in terms of exposure and cash flow. Finding and securing this agreement with DAZN and beIN Sports is the solution that, after several hours of discussions, the Ligue 1 chairmen were virtually unanimously in favor of.
“It’s obviously not the result we’d imagined at the outset, but it means that the future is not compromised,” added Caillot.
The clubs will earn a total of 700 million euros per annum to share between themselves. However, that amount is a far cry from the initial one billion euros the LFP hoped to attract for domestic rights alone when the rights were put out to tender last autumn.
The 2024-25 Ligue 1 season will begin on August 16.