Soccer-Ligue 1 seeks long-term TV deal as 2027-32 rights tender opens

By Vincent Daheron

PARIS, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The French Professional Football League (LFP) launched a tender on Tuesday for Ligue 1's domestic audiovisual rights from 2027 to 2032, with a December 3 deadline to submit bids as the league seeks to draw a line under years of broadcast uncertainty.

The process comes after a prolonged television rights saga that has squeezed club revenues and follows a series of rights negotiations that fell short of expectations.

Under the tender, the LFP is offering a single package covering all nine matches from each Ligue 1 round, taking advantage of legislation that allows the league to market the rights as one lot.

Bidders can either acquire the full broadcast rights or secure exclusive distribution of the league-owned Ligue 1+ channel.

Ligue 1+ was launched by the league in 2025 after its deal with DAZN ended and carries every Ligue 1 match this season. beIN Sports had previously retained one match per round.

"If we decided to test the market, it's because we believe the environment is more favourable than in 2023," LFP president Vincent Labrune told reporters.

"We will try to find the best combination of value, exposure and accessibility for our product. We're approaching the process with relative serenity."

The tender had initially been planned for the 2029-2034 cycle, but the league brought the timetable forward after sounding out potential bidders.

"We realised that the interest was mainly in 2027-2032," LFP media chief executive Olivier Bramly told Reuters.

"The platforms told us that this was the right time to do it for 2027-2032."

AMBITIOUS RESERVE PRICE

Bidders must submit three components as part of their offers: a financial proposal, a qualitative proposal and a financial guarantee mechanism.

For the process to succeed, the financial bid must exceed a confidential reserve price, with the financial and qualitative elements assessed together.

"The reserve price needs to be significantly above Ligue 1+'s projected trajectory. It's ambitious, but not unrealistic," Bramly said, adding that the figure was still being finalised.

"We have this comfort and this luxury because we have Ligue 1+, there's no emergency."

Should the tender fail, the league said it would continue developing its in-house platform.

The LFP has held discussions with about 10 potential partners and is particularly keen to attract streaming companies, with Bramly saying digital platforms were showing strong interest in Ligue 1 rights.

Recent deals have underlined the growing appetite of streaming services for live sports, with Disney+ acquiring Spanish league rights in France and Netflix securing rights to the 2030 World Cup in Spain and Andorra.

"American platforms are reaching a bit more maturity in their thinking about sports content than they were two or three years ago, and that's why we see the timing of this call for bids as much better," Labrune said.

The outcome of the tender, which Bramly described as "very important for French football", is due to be announced on December 4.

(Reporting by Vincent Daheron, editing by Pritha Sarkar)