The broadcaster is proposing the French league uses the money to invest in its own D2C service

Ligue 1 DAZN

Late last week, the long-running dispute between Ligue 1 and DAZN came to an end. DAZN will reportedly have to pay Ligue 1 a breakage fee of €100m, and Ligue 1 will have to either find a new broadcast partner or go D2C.

DAZN terminated its contract after one season of Ligue 1.

The French league had sold the majority of its Ligue 1 domestic TV rights to DAZN for €325 million per season from 2024 to 2029.

But DAZN found subscriber numbers weren’t growing in line with what the streamer needed to make the deal worthwhile, and also claimed the league wasn’t doing enough to tackle piracy. DAZN’s Ligue 1 service had 500,000 subscribers, and it needed 1.5 million to break even.

The expectation for Ligue 1 is that any rights deal for the next season will be for less than the previous DAZN contract.

The collapse of the DAZN deal comes at a bad time for Ligue 1 teams, who have reportedly run up accumulated losses of around €1.2 billion, including through overspending on players to secure sporting success.

It’s also the second time in just five years that a broadcaster has prematurely terminated a contract with Ligue 1.

During the 2020/21 season, a deal worth €1.15 billion per season with Mediapro fell through. At that time, Amazon Prime and Canal+ picked up the rights, but for 50% less than the Mediapro deal.

LFP’s (the French football governing body) options now include setting up its own D2C service, which DAZN has proposed its breakage fee is invested in. DAZN could then potentially add the Ligue 1 D2C service to the list of OTT platforms it already distributes.