The professional football clubs may have found a broadcasting agreement with Canal + until the end of the season, they nonetheless remain in an extremely precarious economic situation. The board of directors of the Professional Football League, meeting this Monday afternoon, has therefore decided to call on the State and the ministers concerned Jean-Michel Blanquer (Sports) and Bruno Le Maire (Economy). “The LFP requests an emergency meeting with the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Recovery, and the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports to receive the leaders of the LFP and a delegation of clubs in order to build an emergency support plan, explains the League in a press release.
“There is no question here of asking the State to compensate for the drop in TV rights, or the failure of Mediapro”, take care to specify the club presidents from the next line. But the latter believe that “the measures already taken by the government for the current season (of the order of 100 million euros, excluding loan guaranteed by the State for professional football) are unfortunately proving insufficient or unsuitable to continue the activity of the sector. “
On the side of the Ministry of Sports, they say “understand” the difficulties of clubs aggravated by the continuation of the pandemic and its restrictive measures (absence of ticketing, sponsorship and TV rights in decline…). Jean-Michel Blanquer has already given his agreement for a joint meeting with his colleague Bruno Lemaire. A meeting with representatives of French football must be held before the end of the week or at the very beginning of the following one.
Aid already paid in 2020
Not long ago, the Minister of Sports had however spoken of a “form of greed and unrealism” of the football world in the Mediapro file, a problem that the State did not according to him “seek to compensate” . If some, at the highest summit of the state, consider that the serious financial worries of the clubs cannot be completely decorrelated from the failure of the former Sino-Spanish broadcaster, the time has now come to look for solutions and additional mechanisms to those already in place.
The ministry never ceases to recall the 75 million euros for 2020 as compensation for ticketing losses (currently being disbursed by the ministry), exemptions from social contributions, and the increase to 1.8 million euros of the ceiling for exemptions from charges per company so far set at 800,000 euros. The different players should quickly get together to talk about it again.
Article original de: www.leparisien.fr
