The Man Who Put French Soccer at Risk Says It’s Not His Fault

When Jaume Roures and also Mediapro left a billion-dollar TV agreement, Ligue 1 teams felt the capture. However he says they have a larger issue.

Jaume Roures claims the business practices of French groups, not his media business, are to blame for Ligue 1's monetary problems.Credit ... Ian Langsdon/EPA, using Shutterstock Resting alone on a long table inside a board space deep inside France's national setting up, the Spanish businessman tried to explain why things had actually gone wrong, so really wrong.The business person, Jaume Roures, the creator of a vast media business, was the latest figure-- and also perhaps the most significant-- to be quizzed by legislators wanting to recognize why expert football in France had actually been brought to the edge of financial disaster by the collapse of a broadcasting agreement. The bargain, hailed as a financial game-changer when it was signed in 2018, was marketed as one that would drastically change the potential customers of France's leading groups, moving them closer to their rivals in Spain as well as Italy, as well as maybe even those in England's Premier Organization, the globe's dominant domestic championship.Instead, the$1 billion

contract with Mediapro, Roures's Chinese-backed business, broke down soon after it had actually entered pressure in 2020. Roures suspended payments, asking for a renegotiation because of the monetary impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The league disagreed, and also Roures, incapable to consent to new terms, pulled the plug and left France, a country where he once looked for sanctuary after fighting versus the dictatorship in his indigenous Spain. The influence of the failing-- for Roures and his firm, for club execs and also for French football-- continues to be really felt. Clubs that not

so long back were taken in by giddy thoughts of having the ability to take on some of Europe's ideal are currently eaten with darker worries about just how they are going to make it through. Clubs unloaded young stars as well as dependable veterans

in the summer transfer market where they could, occasionally for charges below market price as the marketplace itself cratered, to cover for gaps on troubled annual report. And also a public auction this year to select Mediapro's substitute as the organization's broadcaster ended with Amazon consenting to pay much less than a third of what Roures and also Mediapro had when promised.At his hearing in September, the hairless and also bespectacled Roures looked much more like an university teacher than a media mogul. Overlooking at a sheaf of documents laid out before him in Room 6242 of the Palais Bourbon, he began by delivering a twisting soliloquy in Spanish-accented French that touched upon a number of variables for why, in his view, things deciphered so amazingly. He was still talking in a monotone when among the legislators, Cédric Roussel, interfered."You offer the impact that it was everybody else's fault except Mediapro's,"Roussel, sitting on an elevated dais he showed to various other members of the committee, said.Many in France continue to be angry over Roures's exit, over just how he shuttered a new network set up to broadcast games, over exactly how he might bow out his commitments while paying only 100 million euros in settlement and also over just how his organizations have actually begun to rebound from the pandemic while the futures of French clubs stay shrouded doubtful and also uncertainty."We might have a postponed catastrophe,"said Pierre Maes, a specialist and the writer of "Le Business des Droits television du Foot,"a book on the soccer legal rights market. Image Midfielder Eduardo Camavinga was just one of the most effective leads to leave Ligue 1 over the summer.Credit...Jean-Francois Monier/Agence France-Presse-- Getty Images Picture Camavinga, 18, was just one of France's finest young prospects at Rennes. Now he plays for Actual Madrid.Credit ... Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse-- Getty Images Roures, in a meeting with The New York Times shortly before his target market with legislators, doubled down on his idea that

his plan would certainly

have worked had the pandemic not changed whatever. For it to work, however, Mediapro's new channel, Telefoot, would require to attract three million customers, even more than the reported 300,000 it had handled to lure by the time of its collapse. Recalling at just how points unfolded, Roures states currently, it was the French league thaterred in not renegotiating with him. He competes that his brand-new deal-- concerning 580 million euros, or

concerning$675 million-- was dual the quantity the league managed to remove from Amazon.com; that the federal government's failing to deal with piracy also added to Mediapro's rash exit; which Canal And also, France's leading pay-TV driver, tried to abuse its dominant position.That stance might discuss why he was unable to bargain his contract with the league in the autumn of 2020. Roures, stated a team owner that also remains on the French organization's board

,"lost all trustworthiness, and also no person wished to find out about him."A spokesman for the league did not respond to an ask for comment.Meanwhile, Roures, who climbed to prestige at the millenium when he protected domestic legal rights to the Spanish titans Barcelona and also Actual Madrid, lamented the rate he had paid."There has actually been considerable reputational damage for us,"he said in the meeting from Mediapro's head office in Barcelona, Spain.Asked if any type of component of his foray into French football maintained him up during the night, he stated no:"I sleep like an infant."While in his meeting Roures tried to provide different explanations wherefore took place, he declined to direct fingers directly at France's clubs or its league. However he recommended his new sight from the sideline supplied him

a glimpse of the structural trouble that he recommended can leave the French league constantly in the darkness of its rivals: Teams there, Roures said, are far too reliant on player trading to stabilize their books."I would state it's the only major European organization where the duty of transfers is fundamental, and that's a major weakness,"he claimed. The greater tv incomes he had assured, he claimed, would certainly have allowed clubs, at least

in theory, to keep their leading stars for at the very least a little much longer.< number class= "img-sz-large css-1ef8w8q e1g7ppur0"aria-label ="media" function=" group"> Picture Paris St.-Germain, which this summertime added Lionel Messi, left, to a lineup that currently flaunted Kylian Mbappé as well as Neymar, is the one French club that appears unsusceptible economic crisis.Credit ... Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse-- Getty Images Yet also amidst the situation, and also the red ink sprayed throughout balance sheets from Lille to Marseille, the French organization has suddenly discovered itself a lot more marketable than at any various other point in its history

. That is due to the existence of Paris St.-Germain, a group mostly shielded from the economic chaos that has actually engulfed its residential opponents by the riches of its proprietor, the federal government of Qatar, as well as reinforced by the summer season finalizing of Lionel Messi.But Messi mania is not likely to be as successful for the organization as long as it will certainly be for Amazon.com, which protected its cut price contract before the Argentine's

arrival.His arrival in France came quickly after that, and other agreements are secured."Amazon has obtained very fortunate

,"Roures stated."But the worldwide legal rights for the championship have been offered up till 2025, as well as I do not assume it's mosting likely to represent any kind of higher earnings for the French organization."