Loans to pay salaries, restructuring plans: how L1 clubs are coping with TV rights cuts

Al'image de Nordin et Zouaoui, Montpellier et Le Havre souffrent en bas de tableau de la Ligue 1. MAXPPP – damien deslandes

Angers, Le Havre, Montpellier… The bottom-of-the-table clubs, who cannot make up for it on the TV rights of the European cups, are the first to suffer. Against a backdrop of austerity plans, they mainly want to reduce the players' payroll, the biggest expense.

A bank loan to pay salaries in Angers, Le Havre placed under controlled recruitment, Montpellier announcing in CSE an upcoming restructuring plan… If the fall in TV rights is brutal for the whole of Ligue 1, the “small” are in the front row to receive the wave. Lyon, relegated to Ligue 2 as a precautionary measure, is an exception among the “big” due to the debt of its majority shareholder.

At MHSC, in these troubled times when jobs risk waltzing – 39,000 at stake in the economy of professional football in France – it is radio silence at the top of the club. But Laurent Nicollin was the first to sound the alarm on August 17, faced with a TV rights package reduced by 60% this season (€7 million instead of €19.5 million).

Laurent Nicollin: “we're going to release young players who will only earn €40,000”

“We have the championship we deserve, we have the rights we deserve. It's up to us to get off our asses by reducing the payroll,” the club president warned. We're going to release young players who will earn €40,000 instead of 100,000.”

Laurent Nicollin intends to focus on training, as he has done in every bad patch the club has gone through. Midi Libre – MICHAEL ESDOURRUBAILH

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For most of these clubs, the winter transfer window is likely to be like a huge sale to find a little cash. When it comes to settling scores, between oxygen balloons and stray bullets, the League appears more divided than ever between the pros and the antis Vincent Labrune, re-elected at the head of the body at the end of 2024.

“Our championship is totally demonetized”

Jean-Michel Roussier falls into the second category. “There was nothing inevitable about this drop in TV rights. No other European country has recorded a drop. Football has been lacking anticipation for years and has been basking in small results in the very short term. Our championship is totally demonetized, it's appalling”, believes the president of Le Havre, who denounces “strategic errors in the thinking carried out for the commercialization of rights. It should have been entrusted to the people whose job it is.”

Having created OMTV in 1999, the former president of OM has become an expert in the field, then appointed to set up the short-lived Cfoot channel of the LFP in 2011, in order to broadcast Ligue 2 matches: “From experience, I know that a channel is not created in a month. There is a strategy to implement, marketing to think about. Doing it last August to broadcast L1 was too risky, I was not in favor of it at the time. Designing a product of this type today without having the distribution support that Canal represents is going into the abyss. That's what is dramatic.”

Solving in a boat that is taking water

Like many of his colleagues, Jean-Michel Roussier is trying to plug a boat that is taking on water from all sides. “It's extremely complicated,” he sighs. We look at all the costs. I hope that DAZN succeeds. Because if we have to create our own channel in two years, it will mean a period during which the clubs will have almost no income. We are engaged in a new economy to be designed for the next 5 years.”

Jean-Michel Roussier, President of Le Havre: “We must design a new economy for the next five years. MAXPPP – EMMANUEL LELAIDIER

“In recruitment and expenses, many things will change”

Some clubs could give up financing their women's section. But it is the players' wage bill, the first item of expenditure (more than 40%) which is in the sights of the presidents. “Ligue 1 has so many different speeds that regulation is difficult to conceive of, believes the president of Le Havre. We will regulate ourselves. In the organization of recruitment, on the charges, many things will change.”

Jean-Michel Roussier fears all the more for the future of his club because “everything has been done for the European clubs who ultimately suffer much less than the others since they benefit from the international rights of L1 sold abroad. The gap between them and us has become considerable.” A chasm that risks, unfortunately, swallowing up some of them.

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