🇫🇷 Ligue 1 is in a Downward Spiral

In the last week this platform has grown somewhat.

Following the Olympics I made a video speaking on the demise of UK Athletics. That video grew quickly on YouTube and has inspired alot of the additions to this community.

If you are new here, welcome to The Long Play.

The business behind sport fascinates me and I intend to bring you much more content as the year progresses.

Today, I bring you some news from around Europe. We start with a tough situation for French football.

Ligue 1 started this weekend, as did most other of the top leagues in Europe.

Thirty days ago, they didn’t have a broadcaster in place.

It’s incredible to think that a sports league home to so much history was without a domestic broadcaster a month before the start of a new season, but such is the remarkable situation Ligue 1 finds itself in.

After months of negotiations, DAZN and BeIN Sports have agreed a deal to own the rights to broadcast Ligue 1 for the next five seasons. The key takeaways are as follows:

• Together (DAZN with the lionshare) they will pay €500m per season to the LFP

• DAZN will show 8 matches per round of fixtures, BeIN will show the other two

The craziest part is that DAZN reportedly have an exit clause in place after the third season if they do not drive their target level of subscribers.

This is a shame to see as the previous broadcasting contracts in Ligue 1 were much larger:

• Most recent deal: Amazon + BeIN Sports paid €605m/season

• Deal prior: Mediapro/Telefoot paid €815m/season

Two seasons ago, Ligue 1 boasted a team which saw Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé all playing together! This was a dream for Ligue 1 as it drew attention and allowed them to command a bigger deal from broadcasters and from sponsors.

Today, that same team sees none of those players playing for them and as such, the media landscape is much different.

The impact of this will be apparent. Clubs have a much smaller share of central revenue distributed amongst them. This will make it harder to attract players. And maybe more importantly it will make it harder to pay players in line with other leagues when individual player contract renewals take place.

The cascading effect shouldn’t be ignored. It’s increasingly likely that players will leave for other leagues that can offer better financial conditions, which will make things worse for the league in future broadcast contract negotiations!

A sad spiral for Ligue 1.

Which is interesting as their close counterparts Serie A sees new ownership…

Drake is the newest owner of a European football team.

Last week, he became an investor in Venezia FC after teaming up with the investment firm APEX.

Interestingly, Venezia were on the brink of bankruptcy despite making it back to Serie A this summer.

In an interview with GQ Italy, Drake’s Chief Brand Officer Matte Babel revealed that he got a phone call from Brad Katsuyama, the President of Venezia with an opportunity.

Not only will Drake join the cap table, his brand NOCTA will be the club kit manufacturer from this season.

When he was an ambassador for the Toronto Raptors Drake was very present with the team. I imagine it will be a little different with Venezia, for obviosu reasons.

I can also see Venezia being relegated this season back to Serie B as their team has not seen as much improvement this summer.

Regardless, an interesting development as Drake establishes himself in European football for the first time.

This week I leave you with what I deem to be one of the maddest set of sports statistics I’ve ever seen.

I remember Katie Ledecky at the London Olympics in 2012. For her to still be so dominant 2 Olympic cycles later is obscene.

Shoutout to Katie and welcome once again to all the new members.

See you next week.