How Ligue 1 built its own streaming platform from scratch

25:33Yeah, definitely. I think one of the learnings that we had during the season is that you don't build an OTT offering or like a D2C offering the same way you just like send the feeds to a broadcaster and then it's not in your hands anymore. as we were mentioning we were looking at the project as a P &L rather than just like net revenues so it means everything from the game production to like sending the feeds in different data center to making sure like the redundancy was robust enough so all the technical aspects obviously the price of your OTT platform also that you need to take into consideration and then on top of that you put all the marketing efforts in order for people to learn about League One Plus.

26:27And I think what was kind of crazy at the beginning is that all the investment that we have put on the table combined with all the investment that Prime Video, DayZone, all the telcos have put, it made that if you were in France mid-August last year, you couldn't walk five minutes without seeing like a League One Plus ad. So it was honestly kind of crazy. So I think to this idea of like it's simple, put the number of fans multiplied by the price of a monthly OTT and then you have the revenues is not as simple as that. Obviously, I think it simplifies also a lot for the users. Typically, this year, since we acquired the last game that was last year on Bean Sports.

27:21It's the first time in the Ligue 1 history that we have all games on the same offering. So I think 20 years ago, you had all games on Canal +, but you had to add a different package. So it was not like one subscription. So I think there is obviously a lot of things that are more than just the revenues and the costs. It means that the client support, you need to handle it. if there is an issue it's on your side not on the broadcasters so it's a bit more complicated than that but obviously we're not the Premier League yet also.

27:58Chris Stone:I was just curious Cyprian in terms of now you hit the ground running you you know hit a million plus subscribers very very quickly you went out with a really low price offer a real incentive for people to to acquire and it turned people into acquirers of the subscription very, very quickly. It sounds like by all accounts, you've tried to increase the prices. There's been also churn alongside that, which is fairly inevitable. But talk about that dynamic now. How are you finding the challenge of not only keeping the subscribers, but also continue to try and build? Because the expectations are high that you want to try and build up those revenues up to where they were or as close to where they were as possible.

28:40Chris Stone:let's talk about some of that that challenge going into year two yeah and i would also just

28:45Nick Meacham:quickly add to that cyprian uh i'm a big lover of the topic of piracy and i think the price point also feeds into that one chris yeah sorry sorry i just i thought that was my mode i was just gonna add into that cyprian like you know piracy also being a thing where sort of the argument is build a product product that's good enough that people are willing to pay for it and not necessarily pirate stuff so i'm sorry nick you had that planned for later but just i love piracy as a keeping them in my back pocket.

29:09Chris Stone:There's a lot in there to answer, Cipri. There's a lot in there to answer. Yeah, I think to your point, Chris, I think the three main elements that we now face is obviously how do you handle a price increase for the fans. I think this was pretty straightforward because what we didn't want to do is to have a price increase without any justifications. I think one of the big problems that fans were telling us the season before when it was not League One Plus is that with this kind of price, I cannot buy the League One subscription because I need to pay the first subscription. Then I need to pay a second one if my club is playing on being sports.

29:55so what we decided to do is to have like a price increase but that's linked to a justification meaning like you have all nine games on the same platform and it might seem okay it's just one out of the nine but obviously being sports had some good games in terms of the picks and like for example if you're a psg or marseille fan it means that you have like 30 percent more games of your team this season on the single subscription so i think the price increase um was obviously in terms of the number of games but also in terms of uh you don't have to pay another subscription to get uh all games uh the second element is like how do you manage churn um to be fully transparent we were like fearing a lot uh the off period during the summer because like football is just like seasonal and there is like no game for two months and there was the world cup so like everybody was focused on like the country's side and so on and the first learning is that we performed way better than we expected in terms of maintaining those people on the platform and I think a good chunk of that is because we had from the very end of the world Cup, we had friendly games of almost every league on clubs.

31:20So I think we had 35 or 37 games during the months and a half before the season starts. We had some European game of Monaco for like the Conference League and so on. So we managed to make the bridge between the two seasons. But obviously, we're still looking like at a churn optimization. How can you have some better churn strategy when people are leaving? If you can like have some below the line offering and so on. And the third one is how do you get new people onto the platform? Because if you ask me, I would say that the first millions of users, it was kind of the fans that were ready to pay.

32:04We needed to onboard them back onto the platform because as we're saying also, Chris, anti-piracy is a big one so how do you convince people that maybe bought the IPTV box and then how do you get them back onto the legal way of watching it but now the real challenge is I think the other million those are people that either have dropped Ligue 1 a couple of years ago or like prefer the Champions League or the Premier League and I think on that matter we're trying to have an approach that's linked to the price with some early bird offering with some promotion that will happen throughout the seasons.

32:49But also with more editorial stuff. We have our weekly magazine on Sunday that is free for everybody so that you can watch for free on League One Plus OTT but on all the Prime Video days and Telco. And the idea is to, by small bits, showing what we achieved in terms of editorial to the users so that we created kind of a FOMO effect. And the funny one is that like when you're watching the weekly show, you get the first minutes of the primetime game of Sunday for free and then the stream cuts. So we're trying also to encourage people to go until the game and then to, okay, I'm just getting my credit card to pay for the subscription.

33:37Chris Stone:It's interesting. I think one of the things that maybe we covered it, I think, Chris, at the time, and I thought was a really exciting approach was it was reported that that Ligon was going after World Cup rights themselves to try and address that retention issue or the churn issue. And, you know, looking at what the reports were at the time, the amount of money that was looking to be on the table was a no brainer, basically, to try and make sure they kept audiences. but Chris I think we might have covered at the time to be in came out of the woodwork somehow with a deal last minute to usurp Ligon and from what I have heard through different people is was the deal was basically you don't have to answer the Ciprian if you don't feel comfortable but basically the deal was agreed completely with LFP and with between FIFA and LFP directly and then FIFA I think sounds like they might have done a little cheeky tactic would be in to try and get a last minute deal out of them uh in and which took away again what another exciting case study would have been to see Ligon acquiring the world cup rights and seeing the impact it would have had on audiences because it could have not only helped retention but also could have been an interesting acquisition tool to see how many people would have signed up to it so would have been one of the most i think was most interesting case study that didn't never happen but what's supposed to happen an interesting what if story yeah absolutely sorry obviously it was one of the like one of the interesting story that we had over the months of january and february um obviously like for many reasons it didn't happen um as you can imagine like very political and a lot of things that happened between the league the fifa and like being sports But I think the interesting thing is that if you take the whole story between May and January, we went from like nothing on the French market to a platform with not only like 1 million subs, but with also the power to potentially buy the World Cup rights.

35:46So I think even if it didn't happen for many reasons, internally we had the feeling that we were creating something very meaningful. Obviously, I would have loved to work on the workup. It could have been fun, but I had a quiet month of June and July and went on holidays. So not bad at all. but I think it's one of the elements to show that we're not just suffering from a situation with like bad market conditions but also proactively looking at some like alternatives and some opportunities on the market and I think you know this season we also have like the third division of France in the platform like League 3 that went professional this summer so it's not the biggest deal in terms of okay third league in france but um it still shows some dynamism in terms of looking at opportunities being able to have a flexible strategy on the market and i think in this very uncertain ecosystems like this is one of the key quality

37:00Chris Stone:that you have to keep in mind for year two cipro were you able to keep a lot of those carriage relationships in place with your network or did that dynamic change at all? No, we kept it very stable. Like we had some contracts, mid to long term contract with the distributor. I think for them it also made a lot of sense to like keep working on those distribution because even if those are markets that have like a big subscriber base, since it's like a bundle, the more you get people and the more season it's outgoing the more like subscriber you get so yeah we have the same distributor we are still discussing with like almost every actor on the market as you can imagine we are still very rational about it so like every equation or every opportunity in terms of distribution like are welcome to partner with us just to circle this

38:03Nick Meacham:back on the pod series one of the things i mentioned at the top of the show and you know mark made a several comments about throughout was the fans have been monetized but it's largely been the broadcasters that have monetized the fans you're now in a situation where you have that direct relationship with the fans so just over the course of the last year what have you guys learned or what has changed for you as a business in terms of now sort of having that direct relationship with the fans you know you sort of talked about internally you guys and had to go through this shift going B to B to B to C.

38:33Nick Meacham:But just what have you learned from the fans in this moment of transition for you guys? Yeah, I think that's a very interesting one. I think actually on the first season, for many reasons, we were more like trying to make the best out of creating the relations with the fans, but without, I think, all the benefits and synergies that you can get from them. so obviously you don't become a B2C business like in a step of the finger so season one I would say it's more how do you get the right information and how you get the right KPIs to understand what the fans actually want so like some key learnings that we had is that a big chunk of the fans are ready to get like an engaging subscription so they pay not only for one month but they are ready to have a 12 month subscription because as I was saying before I think the first million subscribers are the ones that are really big fond of League 1 the second element that was kind of a surprise is that even if you try to look at the week as a big funnel of getting people on the platform the moment where people are going to get their credit card to watch the game it's like honestly crazy it's 15 minutes before the game and 15 minutes after the game like after the beginning of the game so every strategy that you can have throughout the week and so on is just going to plant the seeds in someone's brain okay on saturday at 8 p.m i'm just going to get the subscription and we were maybe hoping for a bit more consistency with like weekly shows original programs and so on.

40:27And I would say the third one is that what people actually ask for, it's a marketing tool and not only like a tech issue. Let me explain. Last year, we had not complaints, but many demands about the feed quality itself. Like one of the top ranked question was when am I going to get UHD or like 4k feeds I want the quality to be better and so on and when you then looked at the numbers in terms of people actually looking at the games people were watching it on their like phone tablets or like on their browser so we knew for a fact that a very small portion of them can actually support 4k but like in their minds they have like the Netflix standards, 4K, okay, we need it.

41:22So we were also trying to learn the demand from the fan and what is actually the reality of the platform. And as a key learning, we now have the 4K feeds on all the 10 biggest games of the season on the platform. So I think we're approaching a moment where we understand more from the fans. and I think the exciting part of the season two is also because we are the only broadcaster of Ligue 1. Last year we had been in sports so we needed to be cautious on the bridges that we were building between Ligue 1 and Ligue 1 +, because otherwise we were like putting one broadcaster above the other. Now on season two, we can maybe be a bit more creative in terms of linking the fan base, trying to make some bridges between fantasy, the Ligue 1 and everything.

42:19And honestly, as we were saying, when you look at data and what you can do with them, I think we're really at the beginning of exploiting them. So that's also an interesting one for the season two.

42:33Chris Stone:Cyprian, in terms of the therefore, we mentioned talking about piracy briefly there. Are you having to therefore, because from what I can understand with the increase in pricing and just even though you've got a reason to justify the investment because euro for euro, it's still the best package out of any of the major leagues across Europe if you combine and compare that market by market. What are you having to do on the piracy front to minimize the impact? Because by everything that we're seeing, it's only getting worse and more difficult to challenge. And obviously one of the reasons to go with a lower price point was also to make it more appealing for those that don't want to be heavily spending a lot of money on these types of things, even if the deal is better than they would be getting in, you know, Italy and Spain and other markets.

43:27Chris Stone:They don't really care about that enough, unfortunately. So how are you tackling that specifically? Yeah, I think that's a very good point. I was saving all the elements for this question, Nick. Sorry, Chris. no I would say like the first big one was last season everything that we've done to like to regain the trust of the users a funny thing was that on the first season of the cycle so when it was on Dayzone and being sports a lot of complaints were like on the price and so on and when you went on social media like for a big PSG against Marseille game everybody that was complaining about the price you looked at the comment on x or like facebook everybody was like okay here is a good deal you can just watch it for free on the pirate things last year and because we made like not only a price point that's way lower but also the whole communication about this is not our channel this is yours because it's the channel of the clubs and since you're a fan of the clubs it also belongs to you.

44:32Last year, every time someone was asking for a pirate link on social media, all the comments were like, listen, man, for 15 euros, just go on the platform, buy a subscription, and just make an effort for your club. So I think the first one was kind of, as we were saying, the communication itself, because the biggest thing you can do against piracy is just lowering the price. The second element is a technical one. We've been working very closely with Delta Tray with the whole network in terms of what you can do, technically speaking, to prevent piracy. I won't dive into too much detail, but we had like some very late night calls with the CEO of Delta Tray looking at tokens, refresh and so on to be sure that pirates were blocked the right way.

45:22Even sometimes we had too many false positives, so we had to reverse back. So that was showing that we had some good ecosystem. And the third one, and I think it refers to what we're saying, Nick, about everything is getting worse globally and not just in France, I think is legal actions. And as part of one of the big reform that was signed at the assembly in France a couple of months ago, the PPL law, anti-piracy is a big chunk of it. So the idea is also to work closely with the governments on the means and the tools that we're going to have to block those websites. So honestly, I would say still a major issue, but it's also an issue for Canal Plus and any other broadcaster.

46:12But at least I think we managed the crisis that happened like one year and a half ago where everybody was like, I'm not paying 40 euros for a subscription when I can buy an IPTV box that's costing me like 50 euro a year. So still ongoing process, but I think we're making good progress.

46:36Nick Meacham:The last thing I kind of want to wrap up here on, Sabrina, is almost now going backwards in the sense of you sort of mentioned that there is a financial benefit to working with broadcast distribution partners. You've got the D2C relationship now. You've got that positive experience working directly with fans and fans now have a positive experience working with you. But there also is the benefit of the financial side of working with broadcast partners. Have you guys even begun to start to think about what that process looks like? If in the future you do go back to a more broadcast focused strategy, like do you still want to hold on to some of those DTC elements, the benefits you're getting from the data side?

47:14Nick Meacham:How do you manage fan expectations where they've known you as the one stop shop that they can go to? Like, have you guys even started to think about what that looks like? I don't want to say a departure strategy, but how your media rights strategy would perhaps change now that you've already engaged this far down the road with DTC? Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And to be fully transparent, it's something that obviously is considered internally. I would say we are not trying to anticipate too much on that for a very simple reason. I don't think there is one person at LFP or anywhere in France that can tell you what will happen next season, the season after, and so on.

47:57What I can tell you for a fact is that with our new CEO, Olivier, that arrived two months ago, he sees League One Plus as the real strategy of LFP media. like we've worked so hard on building everything from scratch that it's now also the moment where you can gather the benefits when you can make more revenues more money out of it and so on and obviously this strategy has been validated by the club's president from the beginning that being said obviously like we're also very rational and business-wise if at some point there is like a big offer on the table and we're not just a media business we're also a football league so if some options will make more sense for the club's president we will obviously consider them but i would say the two elements that i try to think of are the first one and the more league one plus is growing um the better the situation will be when when and if someone comes in and say okay i want to buy the rights so um no matter what happens the success of league one plus will give will get us in a very good position and the second element is that maybe what can happen is not switching back to a traditional pay tv model but maybe having like an exclusivity on distribution and that could be kind of an in-between scenario where maybe you get like a minimum guaranteed and you get a revenue share and so on.

49:35So I think by all sense, League One Plus and all the work that we're doing is just enhancing the options that we could get in the future. And if you compare the situation that we're at today to one year and a half ago where you had your main broadcaster that didn't want to pay anymore. You had a very complicated market with no broadcast offer on the table. I think it's just like the work that we're doing is just going to get us in a better situation at least.

50:10Chris Stone:I mean, look, Chris, I think the reality here is that anyone who's been following this knows that, and I don't think LFP has pretended to do this either. This is the future and this is the only path of travel and this is forever and it's going to make them the biggest league in Europe in three years' time, but it had to be done because of the circumstances that were served. To Cyprian's point, if they get it all right and they can grow their audiences and prove out and create the ultimate kind of business case to present to streaming platforms and broadcasts about what the possibilities are, what they can bring as a ready-made subscription-style audience to the table, that that makes the conversation in future rights windows a much easier and tangible conversation rather than the speculative version you'll get when a broadcaster will tell you they're bringing you audiences and then go down all that, those ebbs and flows of conversation.

51:09Chris Stone:So I don't think anyone in this day and age is sort of naively saying that this is going to be the great solution because the reality is the stuff that we've covered for ages, Chris, is like, yes, this works at the tier one end. You know, Cyprian has talked about that first million subscribers. It was serving the audience. They were there. They were ready to subscribe once something like this was brought to the table. But we know through consumption trends that there's all that audience underneath that. No matter what you offer, they just won't take that next step. And that's the bit that's left on the table.

51:43Chris Stone:And what the LFP will have to work out in the future is how do they make sure that they tap into that economy and opportunity. And that's where the broadcasters and platforms clearly will come in, whether it be through coming up with a new rights strategy or approach that is appealing for them enough to have more games visible for free to wear whilst really still having a really powerful and valuable OTT proposition or selling the product as it is and letting the broadcaster and platform do what they want with making some games available free to wear and some available in front of a paywall and some of it behind behind them behind the whole subscription uh framework so it's it's definitely i want people to think like oh we're saying it's all roses i don't think cibrian you're saying that either you're you know it's been a challenge but now after a few months into the season a few weeks into the season i guess i think my sense of it is that this is now the time where you at LFP know where things stand because the start of the year two season was always going to be the litmus test of how much of a boost would you get from year one to two how many people would you lose and now you guys can see what the future looks like and now can model out what you need to do next yeah definitely and I think it was also like the moment where you you start having like year to year comparison so it also gives you a lot of things to navigate through it also like we changed some things on the platform technically speaking with our partner so it's now also the exciting part where you're just not um like under pressure of uh the timing of the launch and so on but you have like a couple of months to to think about the strategy and to think about the product and um yeah obviously this season is going to stay on league one plus and whatever happens next if it's season three of league one plus we're like one more year about experience and so on would be great if at some point someone wants to put one billion on the

53:46Nick Meacham:table it would be also welcome absolutely well ciprian i really appreciate you coming on and having this in-depth conversation with us like i said you could probably tell by nick's enthusiasm with questions we have been talking about this um for quite some time so to be able to talk to the man uh behind it all it's been a really insightful conversation we really appreciate you being a part of this series yeah thanks a lot guys uh honestly a very interesting conversation and uh as we were saying when we prepared everything, Chris, I think after a couple of months, a lot of people wanted to hear of the League One Plus story, but we had not much to say.

54:22So now it's really good to have like a one year of feedback and to be able to share the League One Plus story. So thanks, Chris and Nick.

54:29Chris Stone:Thanks. Thanks so much, Cyprien. Next time I'm going to ask you about the international side. I have so much more to ask you, but we ran out of time. So I'll have to save that for another conversation. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you.