Leaked footage from a meeting of Ligue 1 club owners has laid bare the disharmony within the domestic game — with Nasser Al-Khelaifi calling John Textor a “cowboy”.
A video call on the afternoon of July 14, 2024 on the subject of the French domestic TV deal descended into a war of words between the two club presidents.
With French football in crisis mode as a result of the long-running saga, the aim of the meeting was to finally approve a deal for the rights to show Ligue 1 matches for the following four years.
After an auction process overseen by the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) that had initially looked to bring in €1billion (£863million, $1.3bn) a year, clubs had been left with two offers on the table, neither of which held great appeal.
The first was a €400m (£334m) offer from DAZN, owned by multi-billionaire Len Blavatnik, to show eight of the nine Ligue 1 fixtures each weekend, with Qatar’s beIN Sports paying €100m (£83m, $105m) a season to show the remaining Saturday night match.
The other, and riskier, idea mooted was for Ligue 1 to go direct to consumers with its own streaming service.
Later that evening, on July 14, the DAZN and beIN option was announced, passed by 16 votes to two.
Yet the tense meeting that preceded that decision highlighted the discord and division at the top of French football.
In leaked footage from the meeting, seen by Complément d’enquête and L’Equipe, there was a row between Textor, Lyon’s owner, and Al-Khelaifi, president of Paris Saint-Germain, a pair who have clashed in the past.
Textor, who was in favour of the streaming model service, accused Al-Khelaifi of dominating the conversation and being a “bully” and a “tyrant”.
In response, Al-Khelaifi snapped at him: “John, stop talking, you don’t understand anything, you’re from… I don’t know, cowboy, you’re coming, I don’t know (from) where, and you’re talking to us.”
Al-Khelaifi then said he was going to leave the video call because he was wasting his time as Textor “didn’t understand” and was making him angry.
Joseph Oughourlian, president of Lens, had earlier said he opposed the deal as he was keen to have all the matches on one platform and accused Al-Khelaifi, chairman of beIN Sports, of having a conflict of interest.
He added that the PSG president “should respect the other presidents” and claimed he was “bullying everyone”.
In response, Al-Khelaifi said he was acting in the best interests of the clubs, adding that Oughourlian did not “understand anything to do with the media”.
When contacted by The Athletic, PSG said it was understandable “some voices were raised” given the seriousness of the situation. They said the tender process had been a disaster but clubs had been left with only one realistic option, which was the DAZN/beIN offer. They said beIN had been forced to come in late as DAZN could only afford eight matches, rather than nine. They added that they felt Al-Khelaifi was blamed for being involved if anything negative happened, a situation that had gone on for years.
The Athletic has also contacted Lyon and Lens but has not yet received a response.
Details of the chaotic meeting emerged as the French TV deal faced another crisis this month.
Last week The Athletic reported how DAZN had withheld half of its payment for this month’s TV rights, a move that prompted the LFP to start legal action.
As outlined in that article, DAZN does not feel the league has done enough to root out digital piracy and claims the clubs have not done enough to promote its service.
According to an RMC report on Wednesday, DAZN is now demanding €573m from the LFP. Asked by The Athletic about this, the LFP declined to comment.
This includes €264m in compensation for ‘breaching’ the contract and €309m for ‘fraudulent misrepresentation’.
Recent media reports said DAZN had so far only attracted around 500,000 subscribers, far below their target of 1.5 million to break even.
If DAZN does not hit that number by December, it can end the deal at the end of its second season.
(Top photo: Xavier Laine/Getty Images)
