French pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus has rejected a request from the French Football League (LFP) to pay a compensation fee that would allow it to alter its coverage of the top-tier Ligue 1 club competition.
Last month, Canal Plus failed in its effort to revise the programming schedule for Ligue 1. The broadcaster had put forward an approach that would have resulted in a change to the Sunday night schedule, as well as the broadcast of two of its three main matches on the Canal Plus Sport channel.
Canal Plus had sought to change the kick-off time for the top match on Sunday night from 8:45pm to 9pm, but newspaper L’Equipe said at the time that the LFP elected to stick to the terms of the rights contract.
L’Equipe has today (Thursday) reported that the LFP would be willing to allow broadcasts of games on Canal Plus Sport – contrary to the terms initially agreed – if Canal Plus provided the body with a compensation fee to make up for the lower audience figures that would come with airing games on the channel.
However, Canal Plus has refused to pay the proposed fee, which was reportedly as high as €9m ($10.1m) per year.
The 2016-17 season is the first of a new four-year rights window, under which Canal Plus will pay €540m per season for its content. In April 2014, Canal Plus acquired rights in France for the two main packages of the next cycle of domestic rights for Ligue 1, while rival pay-television broadcaster beIN Sports acquired the other four packages. The agreements will run for four seasons, from 2016-17 to 2019-20.
Canal Plus acquired packages one and two in the tender. Package one includes 28 first-choice matches, 10 second-choice matches and 38 third-choice matches per season plus a Saturday and Sunday evening highlights programme. Package two includes 28 matches and a Sunday evening magazine programme.