July 14, 2024
Statement regarding Ligue 1 Television Rights
To the supporters of Olympique Lyonnais and all who love Football in France:
As a relative newcomer to France, I have been standing on the sidelines, watching the evolution of discussions regarding the sale of our collective television rights, fully trusting leadership of the LFP. I have long been concerned with the obvious conflicts of interests at play in France, as relationships between clubs, the league, television broadcasters, and European governing body representation are too greatly influenced by a small group of people. Still, I stayed quiet, as I focused on our own challenges at OL, personally new to French football, making sure to be respectful of those in leadership.
I now regret that I allowed OL to be minimized in this process, and that I (and my very capable and media savvy CEO Laurent Prud'homme), have been almost completely excluded from the process, up until now. Laurent is very well-known for his leadership in media, though my experience in media is largely unknown to most in France. As one of the few, if not the only, club owner(s) that built his wealth on entertainment-related technologies, digital content distribution, OTT streaming, virtual reality, video game media and TV/multi-cast platforms, I do find it odd that my prior offers to help the LFP (expressed through Laurent) have largely been ignored.
For what it's worth, at this very late hour, my thoughts are as follows:
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Signing a long-term deal with legacy delivery models is looking to the past, when we should be looking to the future.
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Our fans, especially the younger generation, are consuming content very differently today, and in the immediate future, than they were when DAZN and BEIN built legacy business models that will be extinct by the time their proposed contracts expire;
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We should see the silver lining in this dark cloud as an opportunity to innovate, and build a platform that meets our consumers expectations today, and for the future.
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Ubiquitous access to all games, all of the time, in every global market, with no restrictions
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Game schedules that maximize the audience for our ligue and our clubs, not restricted to serve the interests of broadcasters
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Unprecedented consumer choice of principal games and extended content
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Personalized viewing experiences, giving our audience the right to choose sports and celebrity commentators of their choice
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Multi-cast platforms that enable simultaneous viewing of football games, podcasts, video games and social media
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We should STRONGLY and QUICKLY push reforms into our league that assure parity of competition, giving every community (big and small) a chance to win a championship. Viewing interest in our league will continue to drop, as will revenues, if we continue to see only one league winner for the foreseeable future.
Now is the time to use this opportunity to bring the future to our Ligue today…our goal should be to maximize eyeballs, domestically and globally, and reverse the trend of revenue contraction that is being forced on us by our league leadership with legacy internet and traditional broadcasting models.
I do support an exclusive legue platform, but...
The new LFP platform, as proposed, does not meet this criteria;
We need time to do this correctly; and
We need the right people to do this correctly.