The Ligue de Football Professionnel, which operates the French football league, will launch a new domestic broadcast rights tender before the summer, according to multiple reports.
French newspaper L'Équipe said LFP executive director Didier Quillot made the announcement during a presentation to the executive committee of the French Football Federation.
Quillot is said to have outlined that the auction for the four seasons from 2020-21 to 2023-24 would include new packages, such as a Sunday 1pm match slot targeted at the Asian market. In addition, there would be only one match in the top-tier Ligue 1 on a Saturday night, with most of the games being played on Sundays.
The latest reports come as the LFP in January opted again to delay the tender process for its next set of media rights as it reportedly seeks to benefit from the growing status of its competitions. In November, the LFP announced that it would delay launching the sales process until 2018.
It was originally thought that the rights would be put on the market before the end of 2017, with the LFP keen to take advantage of competition between broadcasters following the introduction of pay-television broadcaster SFR Sport.
However, the league’s incumbent rights-holders – pay-television broadcasters Canal Plus and beIN Sport, as well as SFR Sport – had asked for the auction to be delayed until 2018.