Jérôme Saporito heads the television division of the L’Équipe group. He is therefore the director of the channel of the same name, on channel 21 of TNT. It was called L’Équipe TV when it was created in 1998, 25 years ago, then L’Équipe 21 when it moved to TNT. It is now called, quite simply, The Team.
franceinfo: How do you define this channel today?
Jerome Saporito: It’s a feel good sports channel. We talk passionately about sport, we have a team of enthusiasts and therefore we must transmit this passion through highlights of sport. Sometimes they are sad, but often they are happy. We must be in this idea, to have this feel good side.
L’Équipe has gained more than 40% audience share in five years, with a historic month of November, according to Médiamétrie with 1.6% audience share. However, you don’t have the football World Cup, nor the rugby World Cup, nor the Tour de France, nor Roland-Garros and no Olympics. Finally, niche sports have a wider audience than we think. imagined?
Yes, because we have biathlon, we have triathlon, we have table tennis, we have a lot of football. But, for example, every weekend, until the end of March, we’re going to be in the mountains. On Saturdays or Sundays, you will have nine hours in the mountains, between freestyle, biathlon, and skiing, for example, this weekend in Val d’Isère. So, here, we are not really in a niche sport. We just took this side step of trying to open the chakras, around sport.
“It’s not just football, rugby or Formula 1. We go a little further and that’s our mission and we love it.”
Jérôme Saporito, director of the L’Équipe channelat franceinfo
Have you also chosen sports where the French shine? That helps too.
It’s always part of what we’re looking for. That is to say that a Frenchman absolutely has to play something. We are still cocardiers, we are French, and we are proud of it. That doesn’t mean that he has to win everything, it means that we have to place the Frenchman in relation to the other. We announced the renewal of the 24 Hours of Le Mans next year. Alpine is back in force. This is going to be our story. Can Alpine beat Toyota or Ferrari?
When you have a sports channel, which is free and therefore accessible to all, isn’t it terribly frustrating not to be able to broadcast the Paris Olympics next summer? It is France Télévisions which has the rights for the free-to-air channels.
But they are in the clear and so that’s very good. Our job will be to acculturate the French. We have seven months before the Games and there are plenty of sportsmen and women who will represent France who we will discover on the L’Équipe channel and who I hope will shine from July 26.
Are you a launching pad for France Télévisions?
It’s nice to say that. We have a mission. I heard the Minister of Sports talking about the year 2024. It must be the year of sport and sport must be a great national cause. We register in there. We promote sport and promote the Olympics And then, we will watch France Télévisions or Eurosport for 17 days.
You haven’t tried to negotiate with France Télévisions so that they give you or resell some shows?
The Olympic Games are not part of our economic model. I think that success also comes from knowing exactly who you are, where you should place yourself. We don’t look with bitterness or jealousy at the big chains which have much larger budgets.
Are you a small chain?
Yes, but we are ambitious and we are settling in. You said 1.6% market share. The first day, we were in the clear, we made 0.1%. You see how far you have come.
The Team has therefore renewed the rights to the 24 Hours of Le Mans until 2025. There will also soon be the Dakar rally. You have just purchased the rights. Why did you position yourself in this race which is no longer really trendy? It no longer has the aura of the 1980s or 1990s.
We are going to try to give it back its aura. It remains a human adventure, the best in its field. We’re in rally raids and there, it’s the best of rally raids and you always have the same thing, the same story. Will Sébastien Loeb or Peterhansel succeed? Sébastien Loeb, will he win his first Dakar? We are in fantastic landscapes. It’s going to be winter. We’re going from the Dakar to the biathlon and for me, it’s a big gap which is fantastic in terms of the television experience.
How it will go ? Are we going to follow the race live from start to finish?
No, that’s very complicated because they are 600 kilometers away. So we’re not there yet. But in any case, we are going to restore this spirit of urgency to watch because we are going to do live arrivals from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. So we’re going to follow Sébastien Loeb, or Stéphane Peterhansel, see them cross the line and know if they are in front and those who are behind because it’s timing.
What rights are you eyeing now?
I would love to answer you. We constantly rack our brains wondering what we could get. The Dakar, I’ve been talking with the organizers for eight months because it’s a heritage race. I remember La Cinq where I watched the Paris-Dakar at the time. That’s part of what we’re looking for. Afterwards, to tell you what will interest us, I am quite incapable of answering you. Maybe one day we will have tennis and that would make me happy. We never had the chance and maybe it will happen one day.
You are not just a competition faucet on the L’Équipe channel. There are also live broadcasts, three per day. This is essential when we see that streaming platforms are now in competition with television channels for sporting rights. Talk shows are how you can differentiate yourself?
This is essential on two points. From an economic point of view, because it gives us our model, our power and our strength. And it’s also essential because we are a channel where you have to embody. We have many talents and this is how we show them on air. These talks are there to also give mood and humor sometimes. We have to have this feel good side because I don’t want the L’Équipe channel to be an image tap. We have to find characters, characters that we love or sometimes that we hate.
Being a 100% sports and free channel, can it remain that way for much longer with competition from platforms?
We broadcast 63 sports last year, we didn’t think we would be able to. And now we’re going further since, for a year now, we’ve been talking about channel packages. We created two digital channels and so you have 2,500 hours of sport on the L’Équipe channel and 2,500 hours on the site and the application with L’Équipe live 1 and L’Équipe live 2. All that is is free. So that too is our mission in relation to platforms.
“The platforms will always be interested in what is best. We will perhaps be in what we have just below.”
Jerôme Saporito, director of the L’Équipe channelat franceinfo
On Monday, December 11, you will celebrate the channel’s 25th anniversary on air to review the best moments of the last 25 years. What is your best moment?
Martin Fourcade’s last race, because for us, biathlon is extremely important. And Martin Fourcade, when he decided to stop, follow his last race and what’s more, he won it, it was really a very beautiful moment to experience.