Orange bids on soccer league rights
Only company to challenge Canal Plus's lock
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Canal Plus has bid for 10 packages. Mobile phone operator SFR, owned by Canal Plus parent Vivendi, has applied for mobile phone and video-on- demand packages.
Candidates have until Jan. 31 to attach figures to their proposals.
Launched Nov. 30 by the French Soccer League (FFL), France's latest soccer tender has become a thorn in Canal Plus' side.
In late 2004, Canal Plus paid E600 million ($878.1 million) per season for exclusive rights to three seasons through 2008.
That price was already expensive.
Under the latest deals, English soccer league rights cost $1.15 billion a year, Spanish rights around $663 million beginning 2009, while Germany's Leo Kirch has promised $842 million per season over 2009-15.
The bigger question, however, is if Orange is really a serious contender for the three premium lots of primetime games on offer.
Orange has just over 1 million Internet TV subscribers, compared to Canal Plus' 4.3 million premium soccer subs.
"The challenge is how to invest several hundreds of millions of euros per season to build a sports content business from scratch that could only be monetized by pay customers, which Canal Plus France has a lock on," says Deutsche Bank's Paul Reynolds.
