Within a year, Ligue 1 has lost Messi, Neymar and Mbappé and lost 60 percent of its media rights. In Germany, the league has fallen out with a media partner.
While the continental association UEFA continues to generate billions in revenue, TV revenues are stagnating in almost all European football leagues.
Robin Rudel / Reuters
The European football association UEFA can blow the fanfare when it comes to growth, because the Champions League and European Championship finals are selling better and better. The media rights in particular bring in money. UEFA generates billions, a large part of which goes to the national associations and the clubs – and from there to the players.
Nothing can disturb the football festival on television. Or so you might think.
But while international (UEFA) business is booming, France, the first representative of the top 5, suffered a severe setback. Ligue 1 had long been aiming for the billion mark with the media rights, but then in 2020 the corona pandemic came and the championship was cancelled, followed in 2021 by the insolvency of the Spanish media company Mediapro, which had secured rights to French football.
Ligue 1 has become a supplicant
Annual revenues plummeted from 820 million euros in the emergency scenario and thanks to the help of Canal Plus to just over 650 million – and are now at 500 million, four fifths of which will be borne by the new main partner Dazn. This means the worst has been averted, but that is all.
Ligue 1 has become a supplicant and is a good example of the fact that TV money is stagnating – or falling – in almost all football countries. This is also due to the fact that the European Cup and especially the Champions League are taking up more and more of the media market. UEFA’s leverage is quite simply the expansion of the competition.
However, Ligue 1 is a case of illness of its own. Before Corona, it was doing too well. It was overpaid. In addition, it always went straight to the provider that offered the most money – and thus scared away long-term media partner Canal Plus. There were too many changes of provider. In the short term, that meant more money, but less reliability. When Mediapro gambled away the subscription numbers and ran out of steam, the television disaster was looming. This has now been downgraded to an accident.
Neymar, Messi and Mbappé are no longer there
Dazn has set itself the goal of 1.5 million subscriptions. If the streaming service reaches this mark, it will pay an additional 50 million. If not, the contract can be terminated after two years. This alone shows how tight the calculations are and how fragile the business is. French football has lost three stars in just over a year: Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé (all formerly of Paris Saint-Germain). Since 2013, it has had the same champion in ten out of twelve cases, Paris Saint-Germain. It is fighting against fan violence – and lost the TV rights.
In 2022, he sold shares to an investment fund (CVC Capital Partners) for 1.5 billion, but the fund will receive almost 20 percent of the marketing proceeds for life. In other words, football in France is living on credit. Spain also uses CVC money and a similar model limited to 50 years. But in Spain, football is on a different TV level, especially when it comes to foreign marketing.
In other countries, the horror is not as great as in France. But examples like the Netherlands, whose Eredivisie will earn 50 percent more TV money from 2025 (currently 150 million euros per year), are becoming rare.
England remains stratospheric
Italy has had to backtrack slightly, and although it has moved away from the billion mark in domestic business, it still remains at 900 million euros. Nevertheless, Naples President Aurelio de Laurentiis disrupted the 2023 league’s media conference with the words: “Italian football will die. Dazn is not competent.”
Even the Croesus in England seems to have reached the ceiling. The Premier League is maintaining its dizzying profits thanks to foreign marketing, which even brings in over 100 million euros in TV money for a relegated team. But it was only able to hold on to the two billion mark because Sky provided more games.
The example of Germany shows that there is a problem with the TV system in football. The awarding of media rights from 2025 had to be suspended because the German Football League and Dazn are meeting before an arbitration court. The best rights package (Saturday games) would actually have gone to Dazn, but because the company did not submit the bank guarantees within a reasonable time frame, Sky prevailed.
Dazn is now suing because of this incident. The league has lost trust because Dazn had already asked for a payment deferral for two installments in the current contract.
Whether the Bundesliga can maintain its TV status depends not least on whether the league and its main partner (Dazn/Sky) can come to some kind of agreement. If not, the question is how the losing party reacts. In any case, maintaining the status quo is the highest priority for the Germans. Industry experts expect relegation. The fact that the process is dragging on like this is not a good sign.
Ligue 1 receives 16 times more than the Super League
This does not change the fact that the Bundesliga is still well positioned and can orient itself more towards England than France. In addition, it has not (yet) sold parts of its soul to a group of investors. The fact that this is now being discussed nonetheless has to do with the increasingly uncertain TV business.
Against this background, those responsible for the Swiss Football League need not have a bad conscience. Even at their modest level, they are in line with the trend. Marketing revenues of 37 million (including title sponsorship) will decrease from 2025. But they will not collapse. A projection by the newspaper “L’Equipe” shows that the French champions will only make 25 million in TV revenue instead of 60 million. The Ligue 1 clubs must expect losses of up to 60 percent. But the Ligue still receives over 16 times more TV money than the Super League.