Football. Re-elected at the head of the LFP, the 12 labors of Vincent Labrune

After the re-election, it's time for work. Renewed at the head of the Professional Football League (LFP), Vincent Labrune faces several challenges to launch his second term, starting with the allocation of Ligue 1 TV rights to the DAZN platform.

Allocation of TV rights

“There are two things that I experience as a fairly serious personal failure: the amount of our Ligue 1 call for tenders; but what I experience the worst was my absolute ambition, to favour a single broadcaster to lower prices,” Labrune said regretfully during the press conference that followed his election.

At the forefront of the sensitive issue of the allocation of TV rights, the former president of OM failed to obtain a billion euros per year as he had hoped and finally sold the retransmission of Ligue 1 to DAZN and beIN Sports for 500 million euros. A setback for him, a disaster for some clubs that derive most of their income from these rights. Aware that football “can no longer live on the income from TV rights alone”, Labrune called a meeting on Wednesday morning between the Ligue 1 college and the broadcaster DAZN “to see how to accelerate their success and push hard in the fight against piracy” he explained.

Keen to maximize the value of “the Ligue 1 product” and thus encourage supporters to subscribe to DAZN, the president of the body made piracy, which has exploded since the start of the season due to the prohibitive price offered by DAZN for its offer, an “absolute priority in the very short term”. “We are going to tackle piracy fearlessly on all fronts, media, political and legal”, he added. “Piracy is like stealing an old lady's bag at a market. Here, we find it normal for the media to explain how an IPTV works”. Labrune thus welcomed the promotion launched on Tuesday by the British platform and valid from September 10 to 22, which reduces the subscription price from 29.99 to 19.99 euros per month.

Governance reform

During his first term, Labrune had the merit of recentralizing power at the head of the body, diluted with the previous team between the president Nathalie Boy de la Tour and the executive director general Didier Quillot.

Perhaps too much, even if he has formed a complementary tandem with his general manager, Arnaud Rouger. This is a wish of all the club presidents, sitting on the new Board of Directors, that of Philippe Diallo, the president of the Federation who spoke at the elective General Assembly on Tuesday, assuring Labrune and the League of his support but urging them to review their governance and their economic model. A message heard: “We have to reinvent ourselves, we have to reinvent football” assured Labrune. “There will be a plan for cost savings, to increase the distribution base of rights to clubs. The president of the LFP will have to set an example by making significant gestures with a reduction in remuneration.”

“We are going to strengthen the weight of the clubs in governance,” he continued. “Promote the product and create a strategic committee at LFP Media (the commercial subsidiary of the LFP created in July 2022, Editor's note).” The annual salary of the boss of the League is €1.2 million, but he did not indicate by what proportions he wanted it to be reduced. The acquisition of the new LFP headquarters, for an amount of €127 million in a delicate financial context for French professional football, also raised eyebrows.