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Business of TV Sport
Sportel Monaco 2011

Orange “won’t bid alone” for French league rights

France Telecom’s chief executive Stéphane Richard said this week that the company would not bid alone for the rights to the French football league, the Ligue de Football Professionel, when they come up for renewal in 2012. He also said that Telecom’s Orange Group was looking for partners for its pay-television channels.
Richard was talking at the unveiling of the company’s new five-year strategy, called Conquests 2015, on Monday.

Orange currently pays €203 million ($244 million) per season for the pay-television, video-on-demand and mobile rights to Ligue 1 matches in a four-year deal, from 2008-09 to 2011-2012. Since 2008, the group has invested over €400 million in rights to exclusive content.

Richard said: “Our objective is to find one or several partners that allow us to continue the story of our channels, but not alone.” Some media reports claim that Orange is in already in talks with several potential buyers, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, for its pay-television channels, Orange Sport and Orange Cinema Series. The channels have around 700,000 subscribers.

Richard said that new strategy was a response to “ten years of profound change tied to the opening up of the industry to competition, regulatory pressure and, of course, the digital revolution and the arrival of new players such as Google and Apple.”