Mahfoud Kerbadj, the president of Algeria’s professional football league, is confident the competition’s domestic rights fee income for Ligue 1, the country’s top division, will “double or even treble” in the next round of rights.
Kerbadj told Algerian newspaper Liberté that talks over a new rights deal with state broadcaster ENTV would begin next week.
ENTV paid Dinar210 million (€2.03 million/$2.65 million) for the rights to the 2011-12 season, but no deal is in place yet for the new 2012-13 campaign, which started earlier this month.
“We agreed with the officials of ENTV [that] we [would] meet next week to try to reach an agreement that suits both parties,” Kerbadj said. “We asked the national television company to double or even treble the amount from last season so we could resolve this peacefully with the clubs who suffer financially. This increase request is likely to succeed.”
The newspaper said that a new formula for rights fee distribution between clubs was being considered, with the league ready to move away from an equitable split to allow teams that are shown more often on television and finish higher in the table to receive a larger share of the income.