The financial malaise facing top-flight French football
French professional football, and in particular the top-level Ligue 1, is having to confront massive financial problems as the domestic season comes to an end. Indeed, from the collapse of a seemingly-lucrative deal with media rights company Mediapro to the Faustian pact later signed with Jersey-based private equity fund CVC, top-flight club football in France has completely lost its way in the space of just a few years. The root cause, as Mathias Thépot explains here, is that the game has become blinded by delusions of grandeur and undermined by a shaky economic model, leading to financial shortfalls which some of the weaker French clubs may struggle to survive.
FrenchFrench professional football is sinking ever-deeper into a financial mire from which it will be hard to free itself. After one its best-known clubs, the Girondins de Bordeaux – whose owner’s dubious dealings Mediapart had flagged up – recently plummeted to the amateur level of the game for financial reasons, other key names of the French game are also reeling.
