May 29, 2018, was supposed to be a historic day for French soccer. After years of watching England, Spain and Germany pull away thanks to their television revenues, Ligue 1 had finally crossed the symbolic €1 billion mark. For the 2020-2024 period, domestic broadcasting rights had been awarded for €4.613 billion, or €1.153 billion per season. Mediapro, the Spanish-Chinese media group, had won the main packages for around €780 million per season, while beIN Sports and Free completed the arrangement. For the first time since 1984, Canal+ had walked away empty-handed. On paper, French soccer had achieved its goal: create greater competition in order to dramatically increase the value of its league. Six years later, domestic Ligue 1 rights for 2024-2029 were worth just €500 million per season. Between those two figures lies the story of a vicious cycle in which the Mediapro fiasco played a central role.
The billion dream completed
To understand May 29, 2018, you have to go back several years. For decades, Canal+ had played a structural role in the French soccer economy. The pay-TV network had broadcast the first live league game in 1984 and had gradually become one of Ligue 1’s main financial backers. But that dependence also created a problem: without sustainable competition, the LFP struggled to significantly increase the value of its rights. The arrival of beIN Sports in 2012 changed the landscape. Broadcasting rights rose from €607 million per year for 2012-2016 to around €726.5 million for 2016-2020. But French soccer executives still believed Ligue 1 was undervalued compared with the other major European leagues.
Didier Quillot, appointed the LFP’s executive general director in 2016, had precisely been tasked with developing French soccer’s commercial revenues. The goal of €1 billion per season had gradually become a symbolic benchmark. The context appeared favorable: PSG had just signed Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, while competition between broadcasters could drive up the bidding. The LFP therefore began looking for a new player capable of challenging the Canal+ and beIN Sports partnership. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Asian and American media groups were approached. Mediapro was part of this new generation of media companies that, in theory, could shake up the market.
On May 29, the scenario imagined by the league came true beyond expectations. Mediapro won three packages covering eight of the 10 games each matchweek and offered around €780 million per season. In total, the rights reached €1.153 billion annually, an increase of roughly 60% compared with the previous cycle. Canal+ won no packages. For club presidents, the result looked like a jackpot. Ligue 1 had financially moved closer to its European competitors, and clubs could now anticipate a considerable increase in revenue.
But behind this record figure was already the first element of the future problem: the theoretical value of the rights had just been established by a company whose business model depended precisely on its ability to resell or monetize those rights. The LFP had allowed, for the first time, the sublicensing of packages. Mediapro could therefore purchase the rights on a massive scale and then seek to distribute them to other operators. This possibility was specifically intended to encourage competition and facilitate the arrival of a new broadcaster. It would ultimately become one of the central elements of the fiasco.
Mediapro fails his target and be forced to create a broadcaster
The first warning sign came quickly. Just a few weeks after the French rights were awarded, Mediapro saw its financial guarantees challenged in Italy and lost the Serie A rights it had also won at a very high price. In France, however, the LFP maintained its confidence in the group. Mediapro said it wanted to launch its own channel and build a business model around a monthly subscription of around €25. Its founder, Jaume Roures, set a target of 3.5 million subscribers.
The problem was that this model required massive distribution. Yet when Téléfoot was finally launched in the summer of 2020, agreements with internet and television providers came together late. SFR, Bouygues, Free and then Orange successively reached distribution agreements between late July and early September, by which point the season had already begun. Mediapro had therefore failed to build the commercial network it needed in advance to make its investment profitable. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted the media market and further reduced the economic outlook.
In October 2020, Mediapro asked the LFP to renegotiate its contract. The group was notably no longer able to make the scheduled payments: €172 million in October and then €152.5 million in December. On December 11, Mediapro ultimately withdrew. Téléfoot disappeared a few weeks later. The contract that was supposed to generate around €1.153 billion per season for French soccer had collapsed before it had even truly begun operating.
This is where the vicious cycle really began. The LFP urgently needed to find a broadcaster to replace Mediapro. But the market was no longer the same as it had been in 2018. Canal+ had lost the rights in the previous bidding process, was engaged in an open conflict with the league and had no economic reason to pay the same price as a competitor that had just gone bankrupt. Amazon ultimately acquired part of the rights for €250 million per season, while Canal+ recovered two games through beIN Sports and Free retained the digital rights. The total fell to around €624 million per season for 2021-2024, nearly 46% below the theoretical amount of the Mediapro cycle.
French soccer had therefore discovered a particularly brutal mechanism: a record price is only truly good news if the buyer can actually pay it and if the market can absorb that value. Once the Mediapro contract collapsed, simply returning to the previous level was no longer enough. The relationship with Canal+ had also been deeply damaged.
From Mediapro collapse to the market’s break-down
It was this rupture that turned the Mediapro fiasco into a structural problem. In 2018, the LFP’s strategy had been to introduce a new player in order to put pressure on Canal+. But when Mediapro disappeared, the league found itself in a market where its historic main broadcaster had been pushed aside and trust between the two sides had seriously deteriorated. In 2021, Canal+ notably refused to pay the price requested to recover the packages left vacant by Mediapro. The league instead chose Amazon, temporarily saving the broadcast of the championship but confirming the spectacular decline in its value.
The problem then became cumulative. The 2021-2024 cycle generated €624 million per season, compared with more than €1 billion promised in 2018. When the bidding process for 2024-2029 arrived, the LFP nevertheless hoped to recover a value close to €1 billion. In October 2023, no package ultimately found a buyer. Canal+ did not participate in the process, and the market failed to meet the league’s expectations. After several months of negotiations, an agreement was finally reached with DAZN and beIN Sports for just €500 million per season.
The figure is symbolic: in six years, the annual domestic value announced during the 2018 bidding process had fallen from €1.153 billion to €500 million. The 2024-2029 amount was even lower than every cycle since 2005, according to L’Équipe. Ligue 1 had therefore lost more than half of its domestic television value compared with the artificially high point reached in 2018.
And the mechanism does not stop with television rights. For clubs, broadcasting represents a major source of revenue. Such a significant decline in income weakens budgets, reduces their ability to invest and makes clubs more dependent on other sources of financing. At the same time, broadcasters themselves must attract enough subscribers to make their investments profitable. DAZN, which acquired a large portion of Ligue 1 from 2024 onward, failed to reach its subscriber targets and accumulated significant losses before its contract was terminated in 2025.
The paradox is therefore complete: clubs need high television-rights revenues to finance their operations, but high rights fees require a broadcaster capable of making them profitable; to make those rights profitable, the broadcaster must offer a product that is attractive and accessible enough; yet an expensive subscription limits demand, which reduces the product’s economic value and pushes broadcasters to lower their offers. French soccer thus found itself trapped in a spiral whose starting point can be traced back to the billion-euro gamble of 2018.
Mediapro therefore did not, by itself, “kill” Ligue 1’s television rights. The problem is more complex. The historic dependence on Canal+, the desire to artificially drive up bidding, Mediapro’s failed business model, the breakdown between Canal+ and the LFP, the health crisis, the difficulties faced by Amazon and then DAZN, and changing consumption habits gradually contributed to the devaluation of the league. But May 29, 2018, remains the moment when the system shifted: in trying to take Ligue 1 into a new dimension, the LFP achieved its record price… before discovering that this price did not correspond to a sustainable market value. In 2026, the league is still working to rebuild that value, as the latest bidding processes have been described as particularly difficult and the LFP is already preparing for the next rights cycle beginning in 2029.