The Ligue 1 giants have a new shareholder on the block.
NBA legend Kevin Durant has become the latest professional athlete—or basketball player, that is—to acquire rights to a football team after investing in Paris Saint-Germain through Arctos Partners. The latter invested 12.5 per cent in the club last December.
The 35-year-old forward just won his fourth Olympic gold medal in the recently concluded Paris Olympics, and now adds PSG as one of the clubs he has a stake in—Durant also has a five per cent stake in the Philadelphia Union, and is also a minority owner of NJ/NY Gotham FC.
Durant joins LeBron James, J.J. Watt and Tom Brady, as fellow American professional athletes who all have stakes in European football clubs.
Paris Saint-Germain open their Ligue 1 season this weekend, when they face Le Havre away from home.
The French giants have signed three players so far, but none to replace the departed Kylian Mbappe. A scorer of 44 goals in all competitions last season, PSG hope their current forwards can pick up the slack.
Ousmane Dembele, Bradley Barcola and Randal Kolo Muani will all be tested upfront, but it would be wise for PSG fans to temper their expectations.
Ligue 1’s plight
The French league is about to open its doors on a new season after coming off a problematic summer when they were unable to secure a TV rights deal before a last-minute contract was agreed upon with streaming site DAZN and Qatar-owned beIN Sports.
Ligue 1 should consider itself lucky with this deal after a lengthy fight with their former long-time broadcast partner, Canal+. According to Ligue 1 2024 news, DAZN will pay €400 million for the rights to air a bulk of Ligue 1 matches, whilst beIN Sports will shell out €100 million for one game a week to show highly-anticipated fixtures.
Having this deal push through is huge for the league, as most teams heavily rely on domestic TV money for a huge percentage of their revenue. Still, the amount was significantly lower than the league’s target of €1 billion, and from the €624 million that was received in their last deal.
Aside from domestic concerns, TV rights deals elsewhere have also proved problematic for the league.
In the United Kingdom, TNT Sports (formerly known as BT Sport) has decided to not renew their contract, leaving no UK broadcaster for the league as of writing.
Because of this, some teams will pocket less money in a sport that requires an abundance of cash, not just to achieve success but also to operate as they should. This creates an issue of parity in a league where a single club has been head and shoulders above everyone else.
In fact, one team has already faced the consequences of being cash-strapped when one of French football’s most prominent teams, Girondins de Bordeaux, filed for bankruptcy and had their status as a professional football club revoked.
The six-time Ligue 1 champions have been playing in Ligue 2 for the last two seasons, and after years of debt and mismanagement, the financial trouble finally reared its ugly head. They have now been relegated to the Championnat National 2, the fourth tier of French football.
But perhaps the reason why France’s top-flight division is experiencing these problems is based on the fact that their league just isn’t as appealing to fans as compared with the rest of Europe’s best.
Last season, the SBOTOP Ligue 1 2024 betting odds had PSG as the heavy favourites to win the league. They’ve been the same favourites for a very long time now. They have a distinct advantage in the monetary department that plenty of other clubs just cannot compete with.
But it’s a double-edged sword, and a part of the reason why they are successful is now contributing to the league diluting in quality.
Back then, PSG were swarmed with star players Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. They also had Angel di Maria and Sergio Ramos at some point. That allowed broadcasters to salivate and bid for rights to air Ligue 1 matches.
Now, they’ve all gone their separate ways, leaving not just PSG but also the other clubs to fend off themselves—financially.
As the league opens this weekend, only time will tell how the future of Ligue 1 will go.
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