Today, I found an interesting article about TV rights in France. In fact, the French newspaper Libération published a report about how much the different TV stations pay for getting the rights to broadcast different sporting events.
Of course, soccer is the Number one, and this with an enormous gap. 600mio Euro for the first division and 15mio for the second are paid. Additionally, 45mio is the value of the National team and the French Cup has a value of 14mio.
Second highest ranked sport is Rugby with 30mio Euro per year. The list continues with Tennis and Cycling and you will find Basketball on the fifth place. The whole package for the National team and the first division is worth 2mio Euro per year. Not a lot but also not too bad if you compare with other countries. One the other hand, this amount has been stable for about 10 years while other team sports like rugby have increased their TV revenues by 6 over the same period.
In the French basketball world, it is a common fact that the discussion about the non-existence of good working marketing and sales structures are daily. These figures prove that in fact there is a huge gap now between the team sport number 2 (Rugby) and number 3 (Basketball), at least in terms of TV revenues. What this means for the success of the different teams and the future of the sport in general is easy to foresee. Basketball will never catch up the advantage that Rugby has built over the last decade.
Sad situation for a country that has one of the most interesting potential in terms of developing world class basketball players.
I won’t forget how much of a hard time they gave me in Le Mans as I was walking down the main street with all the bars right off the square trying to find a place that would let me watch the Roanne Euroleague game. Even in empty places they gave me dirty looks when I asked for basketball in my crappy French. Finally I found an Irish Pub all the way at the end with plenty of TVs and even some English speaking bartenders where they would help me out….They said that they can let me watch the first half, until some 2nd division Italian league soccer game (or something) came on in an hour. I became their best customer for the next hour, and somehow they “allowed” me to watch the rest of the game. What a relief!
In France, there is a lot to learn from the rugby elite managers on how they promote their sport.
Basketball has lost some decisive steps.
Offtopic, sorry:
Ricky Rubio, amazing again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2edNh4k4C8
are you guys interested in a kosta perovic video from open practice at the oracle? i don’t know if there are any kosta fans here but this is a short video i recorded of him from my phone when he comes out of the tunnel. that guys is freakinnn TALLLLL.. ok i hope u like it.
http://rapidshare.com/files/65922518/019.3g2 you should be able to open it with VLC or quicktime. both will do. if u have questions you can email me at smellswild@gmail.com i have alot more videos if you guys are interested.
The numbers for Israel are:
5.7mio$ – tv rights (for 3 years)
300K$ – internet rights (again, for 3 years)
so it’s about 2mio$ a year and that’s only for league games not for the national team and cup games (i guess these can go as a high as 200K per year).
now – keep in mind that the israeli league only has 10 teams so every team gets a bigger portion of this sum.