Where does the figure of two to three million people ready to pay to watch Ligue 1 on TV, put forward by the LFP, come from?

How many subscribers are actually willing to pay to watch Ligue 1 from their sofa? This is the most mysterious figure in French football, while 500 million euros per year have been laboriously obtained in exchange for the broadcasting rights to the first division for the next five years, via the DAZN-BeIN Sports broadcaster package.

The Professional Football League (LFP), which has long toyed with the idea of ​​marketing its own channel, had set itself an ambitious business plan: 2 million subscribers from the outset for 100% of the championship matches, with a peak of 3.3 million in the last year, at a price of around thirty euros per month, stated The Team. “In fact, I think that even Vincent Labrune [le patron de la LFP] did not believe in these projectionscriticizes sports economist Pierre Maes, a consultant specializing in TV rights, who saw in these projections “a bluff” to encourage candidates to increase their offer.

What a load of rubbish, these 2 to 3 million French football addicts? “This figure is not based on any specific reality”Pierre Maes says. In 2018, he appeared in the work of a research firm commissioned by the LFP to help it value Ligue 1 at one billion euros. A time when the potential growth of TV rights seems infinite and PSG lines up the gondolas with Neymar and Mbappé. In 2021, we find him in the parliamentary report investigating the crash of Mediapro, the short-lived broadcaster of the championship, unable to honor its financial commitments. The Sino-Spanish group even aimed to reach 5 million subscribers in 2023, and had set the profitability threshold for the channel (100% L1, 30 euros per month) “between 3 and 3.5 million subscribers.” According to his own figures, he never exceeded 600,000 followers.

It’s hard to imagine three million Saint-Etienne-Nice addicts rushing as one to DAZN and beIN when the prices are known. Like the fears expressed on the LinkedIn social network by Joseph Oughourlian, the boss of RC Lens: “How can we think that an inflation of the cost of subscription with access to less general catalogues will be able to support a growth in viewership of French football?”

Where the figure is misinterpreted, explains Pierre Rondeau, professor of economics at the Sports Management School in Paris, is that this market is absolutely not captive. “When Canal+ lost almost all of L1, it did not result in a haemorrhage of subscribers”he argues. At the time, several audit firms cited by The world estimated the number of subscribers who could have left the encrypted channel to be between 700,000 and 1.2 million. This did not translate into reality. A Premier League match, the group’s flagship product, beat a historic peak in audience figures for the English championship in France in April 2023, notes Le Figaro. As if the football fan had found a substitute for a L1 that is more difficult to access.

“Ligue 1 is no longer just another flagship product among many others, notes Pierre Rondeau. It’s not really a purchase trigger or loyalty product anymore.” Somewhere between Black Baron And The Bureau of Legendsin short. The number of subscribers to Amazon’s Ligue 1 Pass has only just reached 2 million, according to a barometer from the NPA Conseil firm and the Harris Interactive polling institute. And this despite a broader offer than that of the broadcasters selected for the 2024-25 season, since Ligue 1 matches came in addition to the Prime subscription of the online commerce giant, and its streaming platform. However, we are still very far from the golden age of Canal+, the 1990s, when a family found what they were looking for in the cinema-football package. “The French model is built on multidisciplinary broadcasters, with a multiple offering”summarizes Pierre Rondeau.

What price would these 2 to 3 million potential L1 fans be willing to pay? Clearly not 50 euros, the combined price expected by observers for subscriptions to DAZN and BeIN Sports, which will broadcast the best match of the day each week. “It is much more difficult to determine the threshold of acceptability for subscribing”Pierre Rondeau cautiously advances. A survey of sports fans conducted by two economists in 2019 put the maximum amount for all sports subscriptions at 30 euros. The economist recalls a study carried out by the CSA institute in 2022, according to which a PSG or OM supporter would agree to pay a little less than 9 euros each month to watch all of their club’s matches, and a Lyonnais no more than 6 or 7 euros.

Amounts that would be very insufficient to allow French football to exist on the European scene, explained the boss of RC Lens Joseph Oughourlian during a hearing in the Senate at the end of June: “In our business, the price determines the product. You give us more money for our rights, we invest in our clubs, they perform better, we go far in the European Cup, they are more attractive, there are more people watching TV. That’s what the English understood thirty years ago.” A model that French football has still not managed to implement.