The encrypted channel is launching a major competition this Wednesday, April 10 to find its future commentator. She received 10,000 applications. “For a show that did not yet exist, it is already a first success,” says Thomas Sénécal, the sports director of Canal+, at the origin of the project.
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Thomas Sénécal has been the sports director of Canal+ since July 2022. He is launching this Wednesday, April 10, 2024, at 11:25 p.m., after the PSG-Barcelona Champions League quarter-final, a major competition to unearth the new voice of football on the encrypted channel. This new sports show called At the microphone will be available in nine episodes, and will be presented by comedian Redouane Bougheraba and a jury composed of Laure Boulleau, Hervé Mathoux and David Ginola who will dissect the candidates’ performances.
This unique program excites Thomas Sénécal, especially since the call for applications, in September 2023, interested 10,000 people from all backgrounds, all professions and all ages, and who only had very little information. “They knew it was about football commentary and that it was on Canal, nothing more“, explains Thomas Sénécal. Among these very different profiles, there are servers, former speakers, a national secretary of a political party and incredible stories. “It was my girlfriend who told me, or my brother, that when I commentate in front of the TV, the sound is cut and everyone thinks I’m very good, so I try“, explained one candidate.
A questionnaire and a 50-second match commentary
The 30 competitors will be put through the mill by the jury with tests in the form of very specific questions about football and then a 50-second commentary on a match. Knowledge will be taken into account, but also “Rhythm, tempo, fluidity, vocabulary, syntax, depth of culture“, specifies the sports director of Canal+. Because football, according to him, is “a culture and not just a sporting culture. Football is also history, geography“.
At stake ? A real employment contract for the winner. Canal+ needs commentators like Thomas Sénécal, explains, and even if there are already more than 150 journalists in the house, it is expected that next year “546 European Cup matches“be”on air“, while today there are around fifty. At the microphone is also an opportunity “to bring to us people who perhaps would never have dared, who had not had their chance, the right network, the right studies“, according to the sports director of Canal+. So, there is also “a second chance aspect to which we are very attached, and which gives a lot of energy to the program” he concludes.