The French football league, the Ligue de Football Professionnel, has today (November 6) issued a tender for media rights in the country to the second-tier Ligue 2 and the Coupe de la Ligue competition.
The rights to both competitions are available for four seasons, from 2020-21 to 2023-24. The tender has been issued less than six months after the LFP successfully sold rights to its top tier, Ligue 1, achieving a rights-fee increase of about 60 per cent.
For Ligue 2, four packages have been made available:
- Package one contains a multiplex of eight live matches per match-week on Saturdays at 7pm CET, plus magazine programming
- Package two contains one live match per match-week on Saturdays at 3pm CET (28 first picks and 10 second picks), the two play-off matches, the two play-off matches between Ligue 1 and Ligue 2, and the two play-off matches between Ligue 2 and the third-tier National. The package also contains magazine programming
- Package three contains one live match per match-week on Mondays at 8.45pm CET (the top 10 first picks and 28 second picks), plus magazine programming
- Package four contains one magazine per day, from Tuesday to Friday.
The LFP will allow the winner of any package to sublicense rights.
For the Coupe de la Ligue, two packages have been made available:
- Package one contains live and delayed rights to all matches, as well as magazine programming from 48 hours before until 24 hours after each round
- Package two contains magazine programming outside the window available in package one, as well as video-on-demand magazine rights.
The LFP will also allow the winner of either of these packages to sublicense rights.
There will be a question-and-answer period from November 12-16. Bidders for both sets of rights must make their qualitative offers by December 3, and their financial offers by December 4.
Rights to both competitions will be awarded via a similar mechanism to those of Ligue 1: the bidding process will be sequential, secret reserve prices will be placed on packages, and the highest bidders will have the chance to match the league’s asking price.
Ligue 2 rights are currently shared between pay-television broadcasters beIN Sports and Canal Plus in a four-season deal, from 2016-17 to 2019-20.
Coupe de la Ligue rights are held jointly by Canal Plus and public-service broadcaster France Télévisions over the same four seasons.
Canal Plus last week won back rights to England’s Premier League in France, hinting at possible future aggression following its loss of domestic Ligue 1 rights. In May, Spanish agency Mediapro surprised the market by acquiring rights to the bulk of live Ligue 1 matches and announcing plans to launch a football channel in the market.