October 1: LFP Media, the commercial arm of the French Professional Football League (LFP) has signed a broadcast deal in Pakistan and Bangladesh with streaming platform Tapmad.
In fact, Tapmad started his Olympique de Marseille contract against Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) on September 20. The deal, which runs until the end of the 2026/27 season, has only just been announced, however.
The deal is part of a larger push to increase the commercialization of Ligue 1. LFP Media says Ligue 1 now has 53 broadcast partners in 215 markets. India and Indonesia are the other recently completed deals.
JioStar will show at least four matches per round on JioHotstar in India, with some on Star Sports. In Indonesia, Emtek will bring the nine weekly games to its Vidio streaming service, which has tens of millions of users.
These join XSports in Brazil, Migu and CCTV in China, Fox Sports in Mexico and Multichoice in sub-Saharan Africa. DAZN covers Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Sky Sports shows the highlights in the UK.
Abroad, then, it’s going well. At home is another story.
Ligue 1 domestic rights have been a mess for seven years and have lost a lot of value. The LFP has fallen to beIN Sports, run by PSG owner Nasser Al-Khelaifi, and battled Canal Plus and DAZN. The result was Ligue 1+, an in-house streaming service that carries every game.
It launched last July at €14.99 per month with an annual plan, or $19.99 per month. Early reception was strong. On June 12, the annual tier went up to $19.99 a month, and subscribers will have to keep growing this season to recoup the money traditional broadcasters were paying.
Contact the writer of this story, Nick Webster, at (email protected)