Ahead of the 2021/22 season, the Professional Football League has awarded Amazon the majority of broadcast rights to France’s top-flight soccer competition for three seasons.
French Competition Authority has rejected appeals by pay-TV broadcasters Canal+ and beIN Sports over the process of awarding Ligue 1’s domestic soccer rights to Amazon last year.
The two broadcasters took their case to the Autorité de la Concurrence after being left by the decision of France’s Professional Football League (LFP) to award the rights to Amazon at a heavily reduced price compared to their agreement. The LFP went back to the market with the rights after the high-profile collapse of a deal with the Mediapro agency.
The reawarding to Amazon of the broadcasting rights for Football Ligue 1 previously held by Mediapro led the Canal+ Group (GCP) and beIN Sports France to lodge a complaint with the Autorité de la concurrence. The complainants maintained that by granting the rights in question to Amazon for the 2021-2022 to 2023-2024 seasons for 250m euros per season, the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) had committed discrimination insofar as, at the same time, they themselves remained obliged to broadcast batch three matches, acquired in 2018 for 332m euros per season.
In a statement, the L’Autorité française de la concurrence said the evidence offered by Canal+ and beIN were insufficient to conclude that the LFP would have abused its dominant position, by treating them differently from Amazon in the procedure for reassigning the lots held by Mediapro.
Amazon secured the rights to 80% of Ligue 1 matches from the start of the 2021/22 season.
The parcels to showbiz company paid €275m each year for eight matches per week – less than Canal had earlier agreed to pay for its three weekly matches – sparking fury from the Vivendi unit.
In 2018 the LFP accepted a €780m offer from Mediapro for the broadcast of Ligue 1 matches, only for the Spanish-Chinese company to cease payment just four months into its 4-year contract.
