While France basks in the glow of the dazzling Paris Olympics, French soccer is trying to shake off a hangover from its own disastrous summer as the first Ligue 1 season of the post-Kylian Mbappe era begins this weekend.
A year after the departures of Lionel Messi and Neymar, Mbappe left Paris Saint-Germain too, signing for Real Madrid after eight and a half years in Ligue 1.
Nobody was surprised to see Mbappe finally move on, and he has left behind a league in disarray after the fiasco surrounding the sale of its broadcast rights.
The French league (LFP) only confirmed a couple of weeks ahead of the season starting that it had agreed a new domestic television deal for the next five yeas.
Its negotiating power weakened by the collapse of the relationship with its long-time partner, pay-TV giant Canal Plus, the LFP finally signed a contract with British streaming platform DAZN and Qatar’s beIN Sports for the knockdown price of 500 million euros ($548m) annually.
International rights have increased to a reported 160 million euros annually, but the domestic deal is a considerable drop from the 624 million euros previously.
It is a sobering outcome for the LFP, whose president Vincent Labrune hoped to reach one billion euros a year in broadcast revenue.
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