It seems unthinkable – preposterous, even – that the English Premier League would ever go bankrupt. Some of its member clubs generate revenue on a par with multinational conglomerates, while the Premier League itself, as a commercial entity, banked £118 million in profit during the 2023/24 season.
But the financial picture in some of Europe’s other ‘big five’ leagues is not as rosy, and as far as France’s Ligue 1 is concerned, the possibility of bankruptcy and Armageddon is not off the table. So where has it all gone wrong for one of the most storied leagues in world football?
Downward Trend
For several decades, professional football has relied on a growth in broadcasting rights and a very active transfer market. These two characteristics are now being questioned. Broadcasting rights are on a downward trend and the transfer market has reached a ceiling.
Those were the prophetic words of none other than the president of the French Football Federation, Philippe Diallo, who offered a glimpse into the crisis engulfing Ligue 1 well ahead of time. Other big leagues in Europe have managed to weather the storm, due largely to the commercial revenue that they generate through big brand sponsorships and buoyant TV audiences, which help to attract the lucrative broadcasting rights that Diallo spoke of.
Sold to CVC Capital
What happens when few people want to watch your league? Interest, from media partners, diminishes – and that’s just one of the pillars that has been demolished in French football in recent years. Back in 2022, Ligue 1 sold 13% of its media rights arm to an American private equity firm, CVC Capital. That swelled the league’s coffers by a mammoth £1.2 billion, but rather than proving to be the catalyst for financial change, it has merely served to delay the turmoil that French football now finds itself in.
To offer some context to this black hole, the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) – the effective ‘operator’ of Ligue 1 and the second-tier Ligue 2, made a loss of more than £200 million during the 2023/24. That’s set against the backdrop of its member clubs generating more than £700 million in player sales within that campaign. And as if that wasn’t enough, the financial regulator of the LFP has projected that those losses could reach a staggering £1 billion in 2024/25.
TV Nightmares
In hindsight, it’s shocking to see how reliant the LFP has been on broadcasting rights to prop up its business – at one point, they estimated that the media rights to Ligue 1 could hit £1 billion. They were wrong… and massively so. In 2018, the broadcasting firm Mediapro and BeIN Sports agreed a media rights deal with the LFP worth a combined £1 billion per season. But Mediapro, it turns out, were little more than a mirage – they began to miss payments to the LFP within their first season back in 2020/21.
Mediapro
It transpired that the LFP perhaps hadn’t done their due diligence checks on the Spanish firm, whose previous deal with the Italian Serie A had fallen through due to Mediapro not doing enough to confirm that they had the financial backing to see out the contract. In the end, Mediapro’s deal with Ligue 1 collapsed – they ended up paying less than 10% of the amount owed.
The LFP needed a replacement media deal, but they found it difficult to attract interest from big bucks partners. DAZN, ultimately, agreed to step into the breach, but only at a rate of around £350 million per season – approximately 65% less than the LFP had projected for.
DAZN
Although BeIN Sports agreed to cough up £85 million a year for a rights package of their own, Ligue 1 was cut well adrift of where it needed to be financially. And that’s only a fraction of the problem. To break even, DAZN calculated that they would need one million subscribers to its Ligue 1 platform – they assumed they would get many more. But they didn’t, and the firm is now running up losses thought to be in the region of £200 million.
Unsurprisingly, they wanted out. DAZN claims that the LFP made ‘fraudulent’ representations as to the scale of its customer base; before the matter got out of hand from a legal perspective, both parties agreed to end their contract prematurely – it was scheduled to run until 2029.
The question now is: which other broadcaster will want to step into the breach, having seen how the deals with Mediapro and DAZN have ended?
Wealthy Benefactors
Without a money-spinning TV deal to fall back on, many French clubs will find themselves on the brink. The cautionary tale of Bordeaux’s financial collapse – which has seen them go from Ligue 1 champions to the fourth tier in little over a decade – could be a mere drop in the ocean.
Lyon
In November 2024, Lyon – one of the most decorated clubs in French football – announced debts exceeding £400 million. They are likely to be handed an administrative relegation to Ligue 2, and banned from signing players, unless they can provide concrete evidence of a brighter financial future.
Montpellier & Angers
Others, such as Montpellier and Angers, are said to be in such financial strife that they will be declared bankrupt either this year or next. And even clubs with a wealthy benefactor could face trouble, with Sir Jim Ratcliffe said to be planning a sell off of his Nice holding, and Monaco owner, Dmitry Rybolovlev, tendering bids for his controlling stake.
PSG
Only PSG continue to thrive, but even their financial position could become challenging if the Qatari aristocracy pulls the plug on their ownership. They have hinted at ‘diluting’ their controlling stake in the club, with an intent to invest in more projects on home soil instead.
One of the beauties of French clubs is the conveyor belt of young talent that they continue to produce, which at least offers them one revenue stream. But without a major TV deal, overseas vultures are able to pick off the prime cuts for much less than the fair market rate. And that could spell disaster for the future of French football, with complete annihilation not out of the question.
