French football’s second-tier, Ligue 2, is reportedly seeking 12.4 per cent of the Ligue de Football Professionnel’s net media-rights revenues during the upcoming 2020-24 cycle.
The proposal is contained in a working document produced by the Union of Professional Football Clubs (UCPF), according to L’Équipe. The UCPF represents the interests of mainly Ligue 2 clubs.
The document, whose authors include Bertrand Desplat (president of Guingamp), Francis Graille (Auxerre) and Marc Keller (Strasbourg of Ligue 1), states that the 12.4-per-cent share should come from the total per-season media-rights fee once deductions for tax, solidarity payments and disbursements to club unions and the French Football Federation have been made.
Ligue 2 clubs would then distribute €7.5m ($8.1m) per season to those clubs relegated to the third-tier Championnat National and a further €7.5m per season to the Championnat National as a whole.
L’Équipe said that the second-tier clubs made the proposal as they are unhappy at being unable to benefit significantly from the steep rise in rights revenue obtained by Ligue 1 for the 2020-24 cycle. The second-tier clubs’ share of total LFP media-rights income is currently capped at €110m per season.
Ligue 2 clubs are reportedly willing to give Ligue 1 free rein in the governance of the LFP in exchange for the proposed fee arrangement.
The LFP will receive a total of €1.17bn per season for Ligue 1 rights from 2020-21 to 2023-24 in deals with the Spanish Mediapro agency, pay-television beIN Sports and telco Iliad. BeIN has since sublicensed its packages to Canal Plus.
Mediapro and beIN are also paying €64m for Ligue 2 rights over the same period.
The UCPF proposal would need to be unanimously agreed by all Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 clubs to be adopted.