Ligue 1+, the official name of the new Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) channel, was unveiled today (10 July) in Paris by LFP Media. Distribution deals with Orange, Bouygues Telecom, Free, SFR and DAZN were also announced at a press conference attended by big names in French football, including Waldemar Kita, president of FC Nantes, Pierre Ferracci (Paris FC), Jean-Pierre Rivère (Nice), Joseph Oughourlian (Lens) and Philippe Diallo, president of the Federation Française de Football.
“It’s the dawn of a new era, Ligue 1 is the first big championship to own its own channel,” said journalist Thibault Le Rol, who was named to the editorial team alongside well-known journalists, presenters and pundits including Xavier Domergue, Lesly Boitrelle, Marina Lorenzo, Sébastien Dupuis and Bruno and Benoît Cheyrou. Not present at the conference, journalist and commentator Smaïl Bouabdellah is also expected to lend his commentary skills to the new channel.
Discussing the name of the new channel, newly appointed LFP Média director general Nicolas de Tavernost, explained that the + sign has become a guarantee of quality.
A tough couple of years
De Tavernost has experienced football as a client of the LFP, as the president of a club, but has been on the other side since April 2025: “In the last two months we examined the situation in the context of our amicable split from DAZN. We know we can count on DAZN’s OTT competence for the upcoming season.”
Indeed following the collapse of a rights deal with DAZN earlier this year, LFP Media has signed a distribution agreement with DAZN for OTT distribution of the new channel and is in discussions with other operators, with further announcements expected in the coming days.
Thanks to payments from DAZN and beIN Sports, the channel starts with around €165m in its pocket. De Tavernost expects the new channel to cost around €66m, with €35-37m already paid by LFP Media to produce the matches, and adding in editorial, marketing, experts, consultants and commentators.
He thanked all the club directors for their support for this project, which he described as a foregone conclusion due to the lack of market around the purchase of Ligue 1 rights.
“We are taking control of our own destiny, we expect a difficult couple of years ahead when it comes to the establishment of an asset, the returns of this channel will be progressive.”
Vincent Labrune, president of the LFP, said they had hoped to launch the channel in 2024, but collectively agreed that too speedy a launch could negatively affect the more modest football clubs. He hopes to challenge Germany on the UEFA rankings this season.
“In terms of sport, it’s the right time. PSG won the Champions League and will play in the final of FIFA Club World Cup,” he said. “All our clubs rounded off an exceptional 2024-2025 season. It’s the third most followed championship, and signings of Paul Pogba and Olivier Giroud show that our clubs still have strong attractiveness and ambitious recruitment tactics.” Both players shared video messages of encouragement at the press conference.
Ligue 1+ offer
The three Ligue 1+ options include a general offer of €14.99 (with commitment and two users, or €16.99 without commitment). There is also a €9.99 package for those under 26, not available at the start of the season, and a single-user mobile offer of €14.99 for mobile and tablet, without commitment.
“We hope to be present everywhere and with great ease of access,” said Jérôme Cazadieu, marketing and editorial director for LFP Media. “We seek hyperdistribution and want to widen our subscriber base to meet fans where they usually consume content. We have a digital offer for Ligue 1+ that will be carried on a dedicated platform. This platform will have a website, a digital app, an app for connected devices and games consoles.”
The new platform will screen all nine matches, but one will be delayed. “We expect to screen all nine matches next season,” said de Tavernost. “We broke a world record to create this channel in such short a timeframe.”
It will also offer viewers presentations before each match, with 20 hours of live coverage per weekend starting an hour before each match. A magazine show is planned for Saturdays and an unencrypted free-to-air magazine show will air on Sundays before the last event. To celebrate the launch, the first magazine programme and Sunday night match, Nantes vs PSG on Sunday 17 August at 9pm, will be freely accessible.
“We wanted to offer a similar editorial cover 20 minutes before each match,” explained Cazadieu. “We are in discussions with a number of clubs to modify media agreements. We need to improve our live coverage and will cover a vast array of subjects, this won’t just be a line up of matches. Our job is to tell stories, not only about the big clubs but also the smaller ones.”
Paris FC on screen
A new six-episode series on the Paris FC was also announced and Cazadieu thanked the directors of the Paris FC club for allowing cameras to follow their latest season from the inside. Another series dedicated to Dante’s last L1 season is also on the cards, with cameras following the OGC Nice captain to give viewers the inside track.
Production and Distribution
Earlier in the week, the LFP announced Mediawan Sport as the producer of Ligue 1+. Mediawan Sport is a subsidiary of French media conglomerate and audiovisual international production and distribution group Mediawan, founded in 2015 by Pierre-Antoine Capton, Xavier Niel and Matthieu Pigasse.
Asked why LFP Media was chosen over other big names such as French sports TV channel L’Equipe, de Tavernost said: “We set up a competition between all the operator producers and boiled it down to a choice between L’Équipe and Mediawan. One of the key differenciators was the size of Mediawan’s studio space, that matches our ambitions for the channel. L’Équipe had technical constraints on that front.”
On the topic of online piracy and copyright enfringement, LFP Media is aiming for attractive pricing. “The youth audience offer is in the pipeline, delayed for technical reasons. We are also expecting laws in the Senate to help fight against piracy. We had hoped it would go faster but hope they will be enacted in 2026. Our OTT system will have an in-built anti-piracy system.”
De Tavernost confirmed that everyone will work out of the LFP offices. “We start at zero subscriptions, so the growth will be strong, especially as DAZN has subscribers it can target. The editorial teams and Mediawan’s teams will be located in the LFP offices, we are gathering everyone to manage this channel.”
Addressing the failure of the LFP’s discussions with Canal+ about the distribution of the channel, de Tavernost says his door remains open: “Every big platform has signed up already, there will be an OTT hyper distribution with operators like Free, Orange, SFR, and Bouygues.”
The LFP is also aiming at a younger audience, with the creation of an esports season.
De Tavernost has ambitious targets for the channel: “Our aim is to have a million subscribers by season end. By the end of year four, we aim for between 2.2 and 2.5 million subscribers. We won’t go into business plan details, but there will be price evolutions and we expect the first two years to be less lucrative than the two last ones.”
