France’s LFP chiefs unveil battle plan to break into Europe’s Big 4

By Paul Nicholson

April 26 – French league president Nathalie Boy de la Tour and general secretary Didier Quillot have unveiled a new strategic plan for the French Football League (LFP) that will take them through to 2022 and close the gap on the English, Spanish, German and Italian leagues.

“This is an innovative approach for the League. For the first time, we have partnered our clubs to have a common project. It is often difficult to agree on everything, but we have defined an ambitious and realistic vision,” said Boy de la Tour.

“We met with all the presidents of the Ligue 1 and Domino’s Ligue 2 clubs to identify the levers to activate. Our intention is to catch up to the other major European championships by 2022. At the sporting level, we are now in 5th place in the UEFA rankings, our intention is to break into the Big 4,” she said.

In a sporting context breaking into the ‘Big 4’ is important due to the new UEFA regulations guaranteeing four Champions League slots to the top four leagues. Breaking into the Big 4 commercially is a recognition that the LFP has trailed the leading leagues but that a commercial breakthrough is required to support the sporting ambition.

The plan is based around five strategic priorities and outlines 20 initiatives within them (see chart).

 

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The five priorities are outlined as: to protect and value the development of French players; increase the value of French professional football internationally, boost the matchday experience and increase merchandising revenues; build relations with companies, investors and European governing body UEFA; and develop a brand and communications strategy, as well as a corporate social responsibility plan.

Boy de la Tour emphasised “the first priority voted by the actors of football is the establishment of an ethical charter of behaviour…This charter will have to allow better control of the given image of football.”

Commercially Quillot said the LFP will open a second overseas office (it has one in Beijing), either in Asia or North America. For the 2017/2018 season he said that games in the league will also be programmed on Sundays at 1pm or 3pm to increase broadcast sales opportunities.

Boy de la Tour also played up the LFP’s CSR plan, saying: “French professional football was doing an enormous amount of work on the economic and societal level. This is not sufficiently recognized today. We will target the priority causes to support in the coming years and value them.”

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