Football Ligue 1 – TV: BeInSports and Qatar sickened L1 clubs
The war for lot 3 of TV rights took a sharp turn on Friday with the announcement by BeInSports of its decision to place itself under the protection of the commercial court. In panic, the Ligue 1 clubs are crying scandal.
This is a situation that no one had seen coming, and it has inevitably hurt the Professional Football League and the Ligue 1 clubs. While Canal + and BeInSports are fighting in court at a regular pace in order to “ pass « the two Ligue 1 matches paid for 332ME per season, the Qatari channel, which contractually owns these meetings scheduled for Saturday at 9 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m., has decided to deal a brutal blow to the LFP. Indeed, the lawyer for the Qatari media confirmed that the channel had requested conciliation from the Nanterre commercial court, and had therefore placed itself under the protection of the latter. In other words, BeInSports estimates that it will not be able to pay the 56 million euros due at the beginning of August and at the last moment it uses the same procedure as Mediapro last year.
A conciliator will therefore take up the matter and try to find a suitable solution for all of the two camps, while in one week the 2021-2022 season of Ligue 1 will begin. In the meantime, club leaders have taken an uppercut, the only contract signed with Amazon that does not allow for better days financially. And in Le Monde, we learn that some presidents are ulcerated by the attitude of Qatar, which spends for Paris Saint-Germain, but refuses to pay for BeInSports, even if the chain lives only on its own revenues. » From the point of view of Qatar, the situation appears ubiquitous: on the one hand, the kingdom is completely overwhelmed with PSG – it has still spent 84 million euros in the transfer window -, on the other, it is ready to drop its subsidiary, and incidentally plunge French football into disarray. « It’s abject », testifies a club president, on condition of anonymity », Explains the daily evening. Chance of the calendar, the first match that BeInSports could broadcast without paying the rights will be that between Troyes and … Paris Saint-Germain scheduled for next Saturday.
