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      Irv Cross, First Black Network TV Sports Analyst, Dies at 81

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIrv Cross, First Black Network TV Sports Analyst, Dies at 81After playing defensive back in the N.F.L., he made history when he joined CBS Sports’ pregame show, “The NFL Today.”Irv Cross in 1985. He had a 15-year run as an analyst on “The NFL Today.”Credit…George Rose/Getty ImagesMarch 1, 2021Updated 7:48 p.m. ETIrv Cross, a Pro Bowl defensive back with two N.F.L. teams who later made history as the first Black full-time television analyst for a network television sports show, died on Sunday in a hospice in North Oaks, Minn. He was 81.The cause was ischemic cardiomyopathy, a heart disease, said his wife, Liz Cross. He also had dementia, which he believed had been caused by concussions he endured in his playing days. He had arranged to donate his brain to the Boston University Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center.By 1975, after nine seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams and four years as a game analyst for CBS Sports, the network hired Mr. Cross to join the cast of its pregame show, “The NFL Today,” beginning a 15-year run as a high-profile commentator. He, Brent Musburger and Phyllis George — and, starting a year later, the betting maven Jimmy Snyder, who was known as the Greek — previewed and analyzed the day’s coming games and gave half-time scores.The cast was unlike others in N.F.L. television programming, with Mr. Cross in a job that no other Black sports journalist had held before, and Ms. George, a former Miss America, becoming one of the first female sportscasters. With entertaining banter and byplay, the combination of personalities proved extremely popular.“Irv was a very smart, hardworking, hugely kind person who always had a warmth about him,” Ted Shaker, the former executive producer of CBS Sports, said in a phone interview. “He had built up his credibility as a player and game analyst, and he was our anchor at ‘The NFL Today.’” He added, “Like Phyllis, Irv was a true pioneer.” (Ms. George died in May at 70.)In 1988, CBS fired Mr. Snyder over widely publicized comments he had made in an interview about the physical differences between Black and white athletes. His comments, Mr. Cross said at the time, “don’t reflect the Jimmy the Greek I know, and I’ve known him for almost 13 years.” (Mr. Snyder died in 1996.)After CBS fired Mr. Musburger in a contract dispute in 1990, the network overhauled “The NFL Today,” ending Mr. Cross’s long run on the program. He returned to being a game analyst at CBS for two years, but after his contract was not renewed he did not work in network television again.“I didn’t have an agent, and I didn’t search for a TV position as aggressively as I should have,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1996.“I just quietly faded away.”His broadcasting work was honored in 2009 when he received the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.Mr. Cross in 1976 with his “NFL Today” colleagues Brent Musburger and Phyllis George.Credit…CBS ArchivesIrvin Acie Cross was born on July 27, 1939, in Hammond, Ind., the eighth of 15 children. His father, Acie, was a steelworker; his mother, Ellee (Williams) Cross, was a homemaker.Mr. Cross said his father, a heavy drinker, had beaten his mother. “It tears me up,” he told The Chicago Tribune in 2018. “It was frightening. You could tell it was coming. We tried stopping him a few times. We’d jump on his back. It’s absolutely raw for me.”Ellee Cross died in childbirth when Irv was 10, leaving him to wonder whether the beatings had worsened his mother’s health problems.After excelling at football at Hammond High School — which earned him a place in its hall of fame — Mr. Cross was a wide receiver and a defensive back at Northwestern University under Coach Ara Parseghian. As a junior, he caught a 78-yard touchdown pass during a 30-24 Northwestern victory over Notre Dame.“We didn’t have much depth, but Parseghian was great at moving guys around and getting the most of them,” Mr. Cross told a Northwestern online publication in 2018. “His teams beat Notre Dame three straight times from 1958 to 1961.” Mr. Parseghian left Northwestern after the 1963 season to begin a storied run as coach of Notre Dame.As a senior, Mr. Cross was named Northwestern’s male athlete of the year.The Eagles chose him in the seventh round of the 1961 N.F.L. draft. He intercepted a career-high five passes in 1962 and played in the Pro Bowl in 1964 and 1965. The Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown once said, “No one in the league tackles harder than Cross.”After five seasons with the Eagles, Mr. Cross was traded to the Los Angeles Rams in 1965 and played there for three years. He returned to the Eagles in 1969 as a player and a defensive backs coach. After retiring as a player at the end of the season, he continued to coach for one more year.Mr. Cross when he played for the Philadelphia Eagles in the early 1960s. He was a two-time Pro Bowl defensive back before becoming a sportscaster.Credit…Philadelphia EaglesMr. Cross began planning for a television career while he was with the Eagles, working as a radio sports commentator and a weekend TV sports anchor in Philadelphia during the off-season. Though tempted by the Dallas Cowboys’ offer of a front office job in 1971, he chose to work for CBS Sports instead.Joining “The NFL Today” came with a certain amount of pressure. He recalled in the Northwestern interview that in 1975 “the TV landscape was much different, much whiter.”“I never focused on that,” Mr. Cross said, “but I was keenly aware that if I failed it might be a long time before another Black person got a similar opportunity.”When the cast of the show was changed in 1990, Greg Gumbel, who is Black, was hired to work alongside the former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw.After Mr. Cross left CBS he changed course, working as the athletic director at Idaho State University in Pocatello from 1996 to ’98 and at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., from 1999 to 2005.In addition to his wife, Liz (Tucker) Cross, he is survived by his daughters, Susan, Lisa and Sandra Cross; his son, Matthew; a grandson; his sisters, Joan Motley, Jackie McEntyre Julia Hopson, Pat Grant and Gwen Robinson; and his brothers, Raymond, Teal and Sam. His first marriage ended in divorce. He lived in Roseville, Minn., outside the Twin Cities.When Mr. Cross played, concussions were usually not taken seriously. He sustained several in his rookie season, enough for his teammates to nickname him Paper Head. One of the concussions knocked him unconscious and sent him to the hospital.To protect himself, Mr. Cross had a helmet made with extra padding.“I just tried to keep my head out of the way while making tackles,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2018. “But that’s just the way it was. Most of the time, they gave you some smelling salts and you went back in. We didn’t know.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Super Bowl Ratings Hit a 15-Year Low. It Still Outperformed Everything Else.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySuper Bowl Ratings Hit a 15-Year Low. It Still Outperformed Everything Else.The game between two marquee quarterbacks was not competitive. Still, the Super Bowl is expected to be the most watched television program this year.Television viewership for the Super Bowl was down 9 percent compared with last year.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 9, 2021Updated 4:20 p.m. ETSunday’s Super Bowl was watched by just 91.6 million people on CBS, the lowest number of viewers for the game on traditional broadcast television since 2006. A total of 96.4 million people watched when other platforms — like the CBS All Access streaming service and mobile phone apps — were counted, the lowest number of total viewers since 2007.Still, the Super Bowl will surely be the most watched television program of 2021, and the N.F.L. is expected to see a huge increase in television rights fees when it signs several new television distribution agreements over the next year.After peaking at 114 million television viewers in 2015, television ratings for the Super Bowl have declined in five of the past six years. The 9 percent decline in television viewership from last year’s Super Bowl is roughly in line with season-long trends. N.F.L. games this season were watched by 7 percent fewer people than the season before.Many of the necessary ingredients for a bonanza Super Bowl were present. The game featured an intriguing matchup between the two most popular quarterbacks in football, Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs. The weather Sunday was freezing across much of the country, which traditionally drives people inside to be entertained by their televisions. But the game itself failed to deliver, all but ending by the third quarter when the Buccaneers led, 31-9, with no fourth-quarter scoring or hint of a competitive game. Viewership is measured as the average of the audience watching at each minute of the game; the longer a game is competitive and viewers stay tuned in, the better.The hype and marketing machine surrounding the game was also changed by the coronavirus pandemic. The N.F.L. credentialed about 4,000 fewer media members for the Super Bowl compared with last year, meaning fans saw less media live from the Super Bowl ahead of the game. Fans were discouraged from gathering for parties, and instead of staying home and watching alone, it seems many just did something else. Just 38 percent of all households with a television were tuned to the game, the lowest percentage since 1969, according to Nielsen.The N.F.L. joins almost every other sport in seeing viewership declines over the past year. The pandemic shut down the sporting world for months in the spring, and when games resumed they frequently lacked energy with few or no fans in the stands. Games were often played on unusual days or at unusual times, disrupting the traditional sports viewership calendar.Viewership for the N.B.A. finals was down 49 percent and for the Stanley Cup finals was down 61 percent. It is not just sports. Compared to this time last year, viewership of all broadcast television — CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox — is down 20 percent during prime time. In that context, a 7 percent season drop and a 9 percent Super Bowl drop is a comparatively decent showing for the N.F.L.Importantly, it also won’t slow down the N.F.L.’s march toward lucrative new television contracts. All indications — including deals made by other leagues and the competitive demand among networks and streaming services — suggest that the league will sign new agreements over the next year with a significant increase in average annual value.Even in a world of fractured viewership that is quickly moving toward streaming, the N.F.L. remains king. Of the 100 most viewed television programs in 2020, 76 were N.F.L. games, according to Mike Mulvihill, an executive at Fox Sports. And while the 38 percent of households tuned to the game was a modern day low for the Super Bowl, the last time that number was beat by anything other than an N.F.L. game was the 1994 Winter Olympics, according to the website Sports Media Watch, when the figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding competed amid the scandal of Harding’s involvement in an attack on Kerrigan.The N.F.L. could become the king of streaming, too. According to CBS the Super Bowl averaged 5.7 million viewers streaming the game, 68 percent more than last year.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Sekou Smith, Award-Winning N.B.A. Reporter and Analyst, Dies at 48

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySekou Smith, Award-Winning N.B.A. Reporter and Analyst, Dies at 48Mr. Smith, the creator and host of NBA.com’s “Hang Time” blog and podcast, covered professional basketball for more than two decades. He died of complications of Covid-19.Sekou Smith, a reporter for NBA-TV and NBA.com, had a long career covering basketball.Credit…Turner SportsJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:58 p.m. ETThis obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.For much of his journalism career, you would never see Sekou Smith in a sport coat. Not at the N.B.A. games he covered, not in the newsroom.“Wearing a tie? No, never happened. Wearing a suit? Oh, you can forget about it,” said Arthur Triche, who used to work in public relations for the Atlanta Hawks and regarded Mr. Smith as his best friend.That was until Mr. Smith started working as a multimedia reporter and analyst for NBA TV and NBA.com in 2009, when he became “the fashionista,” Mr. Triche said.Mr. Smith’s bold clothing choices matched his reporting style: authentic, fair and unafraid, said Michael Lee, a sports reporter for The Washington Post who met Mr. Smith almost 22 years ago. While he was tough on teams, they knew it was always merited, Mr. Lee said.“He can make enemies his friends,” he said.Mr. Smith died of complications of the coronavirus on Jan. 26 at a hospital in Marietta, Ga., where his family lives, according to Mr. Triche and Ayanna Smith, one of Mr. Smith’s sisters. He was 48.Sekou Kimathi Sinclair Smith was born on May 15, 1972, in Grand Rapids, Mich., to Estelle Louise Smith, an information technology specialist, and Walter Alexander Smith, who was a teacher and a school principal. His parents were often present at Mr. Smith’s sporting events, of which there were many: He played basketball, tennis, soccer and football and wrestled.Ayanna Smith said Sekou had especially liked riding his bike up and down Auburn Avenue, the street where they lived as children and a continuing reference point for their family’s group text messages in more recent years.“We were the ‘307 Auburn’ chat,” Ms. Smith said. “Every morning, whether it was Dad or Sekou or one of my brothers and sisters, one of us would text in there about the weather or whatever was going on.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      In Defense of Television, Soccer's All-Purpose Villain

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerSpeaking Up for the Armchair FanTelevision, which influences everything from salaries to kickoff times, is soccer’s most convenient villain. But for the vast majority of fans, it’s the only connection they have.Critics of television’s influence on soccer ignore that it’s still the way most fans experience the game.Credit…Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesJan. 15, 2021, 1:22 p.m. ETTelevision is not a dirty word. It is not the sort of word that should be spat out in anger or growled with resentment or grumbled through gritted teeth. It is not a loaded word, or one laced with scorn and opprobrium and bile. It is not a word that has a tone. Not in most contexts, anyway.In soccer, television is treated as the dirtiest word you can imagine. It is an object of disdain and frustration and, sometimes, hatred. Managers, and occasionally players, rail against its power to dictate when games are played and how often. They resent its scrutiny and its bombast. Television is never cited as the root of anything pleasant. Television is the cause of nothing but problems.There is no need to linger for long on the irony and the hypocrisy here. Television, of course, is also what pays their wages. It is what has turned them into brands and businesses. It is television that means managers can accumulate squads full of stars, and it is television that means that, when they are fired, they leave with generous compensation packages. Television, and the money it pays to broadcast soccer, is what makes the whole circus possible.If anything, though, the contempt of players and coaches for television pales in comparison with that of most fans. They, too, talk about television with a certain tone: television as the force behind the erosion of the game’s values, television as the driver of unwelcome change, television as the root of all evil.Match-going fans in Germany have protested Monday games (Montagsspiele), which they deride as a surrender to television’s priorities.Credit…Armando Babani/EPA, via ShutterstockTo many fans, television has become something close to an antonym of tradition. It is television that has eaten away at the way the game used to be, distorting its form for its own ends. It is because of the needs of television that fixtures are spread across a weekend, rather than packed into a Saturday afternoon, as they always used to be. It is because of television that fans are forced to travel vast distances at inconvenient times. It is because of television that the game feels more distant, a religion reduced to just another form of entertainment.There is, and always has been, a strict hierarchy of authenticity among fans. At its head sit those who follow their team home and away, who devote countless hours of their lives, and whatever money they have, to the greater glory of the colors. They might, in some cases, be ultras, or members of some organized fan group, though that is not necessarily a prerequisite.Below them are those who hold a season ticket for home games. A step down are various stripes of match-going fans: those who attend regularly, those who go sometimes and so on, until we come to the bottom, where those who follow the game, their team, from the comfort of their own homes, through the television, reside. And there, almost audible, is that tone again.Both that hierarchy and that attitude are baked into the conceptual landscapes of most fans. It is as close as soccer comes to a universal truth. Even broader organizations, the ones that speak for fans’ rights and work to protect their interests, hover somewhere between disinterest in and outright scorn for “armchair fans.”In the latest annual report of the Football Supporters’ Association — a well-meaning, important body that represents soccer fans in England — there is a section entitled “TV Hell.”“In previous years this chapter has been full of the misery that broadcast changes have inflicted on match-going fans,” it begins. “From late changes to kickoff times, to Monday night away games 300 miles away, supporters’ encounters with broadcasters have been fraught and adversarial.”For the vast majority of fans, a television is part and parcel of the matchday experience.Credit…Boris Streubel/Getty ImagesWhat follows is not to suggest that any of those complaints are invalid. By the time fans return to stadiums after the pandemic, it would be nice to think that both leagues and broadcasters — having become painfully aware, in their absence, of how crucial they are to the spectacle of soccer — would take the needs of match-going fans into account far more than they once did.Capping ticket prices would be a start, a way of ensuring that seeing live sports in the flesh is no longer an innately privileged activity, one only readily available to certain demographics. Crowds need to become younger, more diverse in both color and gender, and cost — as the Chris Rock joke about luxury hotels has it — is the primary barrier to that.Beyond that, subsidizing travel to games — as happens in Germany — would reflect the importance of fans to the experience. So, too, would scheduling them in such a way to make it as easy as possible for fans to attend. No more Monday nights for Newcastle fans in London; no more games that finish after the last train home has left.But for an organization like the F.S.A. to suggest that the relationship between fans and television is inherently adversarial is a comprehensive misunderstanding of the dynamic between the two. It is one that it is far from alone in making, but it is one that serves to reinforce what is, in truth, an entirely false schism.With stadiums closed during the pandemic, television revenue has been paying a significant share of soccer’s bills.Credit…Pool photo by Julian FinneyThat is because we are all, deep down, armchair fans. If not all, then overwhelmingly: there may, it is true, be a few hundred die-hards attached to each team who travel to watch their side home and away and never watch another game of soccer.But for most of us, even match-going fans, television is the way we consume the sport, whether we are season-ticket holders who follow away games remotely or fans who, by pure accident of geography, happen to live thousands of miles from the stadium our team calls home.You might be an ardent supporter of a team mired in the lower leagues who regularly tunes in to watch whatever the big game of the weekend is. You might find yourself idly watching a distant Champions League game most weekday evenings in fall and spring. You might support one team, but take pleasure and hold interest in the sport as a whole. You might just like falling asleep in front of “Match of the Day.” Whatever their circumstances, television is the vector by which most fans get the bulk of their hit.And those fans — although the traditional hierarchy does not recognize it — deserve an advocate for their interests, too, because their interests are our interests. Indeed, their interests are soccer’s interests.Cameras are an intrusion until the moment they’re not.Credit…Pool photo by Fernando VergaraThis is the part that is always missed, whenever the sport bemoans the power of television: Television, that dirty word, does not actually mean television. It does not even, really, mean the broadcasters who produce the content and carry the games. It means, at its root, the fans who watch, the ones who buy the subscriptions and watch the games and make the advertising space valuable.Because, ultimately, television does not pay for soccer: We do. The broadcasters only pay a prince’s ransom for rights to leagues because they know that we will tune in. Their aim is to make a profit from their investment, whether direct — through the advertising sales and subscriptions — or indirect, as is the case in Britain, where both Sky and BT, the Premier League’s principal broadcasters, see soccer as a weapon in the war to dominate the country’s broadband market.Deep down, it is not television that keeps the circus rolling, it is us. We are the ones that pay the salaries, that provide the millions, that have turned the players into stars. (This very same argument, as it happens, can be applied to the issue of the need for more transparency in soccer.)The relationship between television and fans is not adversarial because, at heart, television is the fans. When soccer comes to consider how it will look in the post-pandemic age, it would do well to remember that: not to present those who go to games and those who do not as antagonists, but as two overlapping groups, with interests that dovetail more than they divide. Television should not be soccer’s dirty word. Television, at heart, means all of us.Political Football (Reprise)Just checking: Anyone hugging? No? Carry on then.Credit…Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsBritain’s hospitals are close to their breaking point. Intensive care departments are full, or close to it. Ambulances are lining up at the gates. More than a thousand people are dying a day. Case rates are soaring. The population, or at least that part of it that is not being compelled to go to work, is locked down once more.Underprivileged children are being sent individual potatoes and zip-lock bags full of cheese in lieu of school meals. The bleak realities of Brexit are starting to bite at the country’s ports and docks. And yet, listening to a substantial portion of the country’s public discourse this week, it is almost as if Britain’s most pressing issue is soccer players who hug after scoring a goal.We have been here before. Back in the spring, during the first wave of the pandemic, British lawmakers seized eagerly on the idea that the Premier League’s millionaire stars should all take a pay cut, as many of their clubs were requesting. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, used a news briefing to urge them all to “make a contribution,” even though it was not clear how them allowing the billionaire owners of their teams to save money would help the beleaguered National Health Service.This time, the central axis of the debate is a little different. The government is concerned, apparently, that players’ celebrating goals is “sending the wrong message” at a time when the country as a whole is forbidden by law from even seeing friends and family, much less hugging them. Lawmakers have written to the leagues to remind them of the need to follow restrictions. The leagues have, duly, written to their clubs. The news media has brimmed with fulmination.To be clear: there are protocols in place that players and their clubs must adhere to if soccer is to continue in the pandemic, rules that exist for their own protection and the protection of society as a whole. Players who are proved to have broken those protocols away from the field, if anything, have not been punished enough.But a ban on celebrating goals is not part of those protocols. The players have all been tested, often more than once a week. If they are on the field, we have to assume they are clear of the virus. If we cannot assume that, they should not be playing at all. They are no closer during celebrations than they are at corner kicks. If the former is not safe, then neither is the latter. There have been no cases of transmission between teams during games, or even among a single team: Where there have been outbreaks, they seem to have taken place at training facilities.Celebrating goals, in other words, is a nonissue. That it has been allowed to become a controversy, to take air away from all of those things that genuinely matter, is because lawmakers are once again in need of a convenient villain, and because sections of the news media cannot resist a chance to indulge the cheap thrill of click-inducing indignity. And both, in such circumstances, know exactly where to look.CorrespondenceThat’s George Best on the right there. Not to be confused with Pete Best.Credit…Victor Boynton/Associated PressFirst, to address a query expressed by a couple of readers: Yes, I am aware that George Best was not actually in the Beatles. No, I am not mixing him up with Pete Best. How could I? Pete Best never won a European Cup, for a start.The confusion arose from some poor phrasing in last week’s column (a lesson, here, on the importance of precision in language). I wrote that Best (George) was “regarded as the fifth Beatle,” though perhaps “presented as a fifth Beatle” would have been better.As the story goes, Best (the footballer) was nicknamed “O Quinto Beatle” by the Portuguese news media after starring in a game between Manchester United and Benfica in 1966. That was then picked up by the British newspapers, who referred to him as “El Beatle.” Presumably because the idea that Portuguese and Spanish were distinct languages was too much for them. Still, we all go wrong with the direct article sometimes.On the subject of the fading of the F.A. Cup, George McIntire wonders whether the most conclusive proof of its reduced status came from Arsenal. “What truly sealed its declining relevance was the futility of three wins in four years to save Arsène Wenger’s job,” he wrote. “There’s no Wenger Out campaign if he wins three leagues or Champions Leagues.” This is entirely right, and it’s interesting to note that — at certain clubs — domestic titles appear to be going the same way.And a depressing note to end on from Casey Lindstrom. “You wrote that fame and values are interlinked,” he wrote. “However, one does not need to look far [outside sports] to see those who are famous with all the values, ethics and integrity of robber barons.” This is also entirely right, and I do not have a convincing response to it. Though I find it hard to imagine that an athlete would achieve, say, Marcus Rashford’s level of prominence espousing less admirable views, and that is some solace.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      French Soccer Faces Financial Crisis After MediaPro Pulls Plug

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFrench Soccer Faces Financial Crisis After Broadcaster Pulls the PlugThe sudden collapse of a billion-dollar television contract has created a serious cash crisis for French clubs as the January transfer window nears.MediaPro paid a record price to broadcast matches in France’s top soccer leagues in 2018. Last week, it walked away from the deal.Credit…Charles Platiau/ReutersDec. 15, 2020, 2:00 a.m. ETThe record-setting television deal was, in hindsight, far too good to be true.The billion euros the upstart media company had promised to pay to televise French soccer matches each year represented an increase of 60 percent on the league’s previous television deal, and much more than any other bidder had offered. It was a sum so large — about $1.2 billion a year — that it led officials from the league and the club executives on its board to ignore obvious warning signs; to brush aside the fact that the company making the offer, MediaPro, had no history in French soccer; and to close an agreement without the type of bank guarantees that might have ensured that all that money would eventually arrive.And then the deal simply vanished.Last week, arbitration talks between the Ligue de Football Professionnel (L.F.P.), the governing body for professional soccer in France, and MediaPro, a Spanish broadcaster now controlled by Chinese interests, ended with the company handing back the four years of rights under its control and less than a third of the more than 300 million euros it owes for games this season.The resolution has left league officials frantically searching for a new television partner, and teams facing a very different financial future.For the clubs, the repercussions may be immediate. Instead of being flush with enough cash to build teams to rival those in Germany and Spain, most French teams are facing restructuring measures, starting with the sale of players when Europe’s player trading window reopens in January.MediaPro’s chief executive, Jaume Roures, had bet billions that he could resell the French soccer rights his company had acquired to other partners.Credit…Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOne team director described the situation as “a total disaster.” The chief executive of another one said the situation — coupled with the continuing financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic — was “hugely damaging.” The president of the French champion Paris St.-Germain, Nasser al-Khelaifi, asked the league’s new leaders to conduct a full investigation into the process that ended in catastrophe for France’s teams. Al-Khelaifi is also chairman of beIN Media Group, a rival to MediaPro for rights.What may hurt most, at least from the teams’ perspective, is that it is a crisis of their own making.The trouble began in the spring. As all of Europe’s major soccer leagues plotted ways to reboot, the French league announced it would be the only one not to complete its suspended campaign.A government decree ended the season early, forcing Ligue 1 to tap a national loan program to ensure its teams did not fall into financial ruin. Only the prospect of record-breaking broadcast revenues, set to take effect with the start of the MediaPro deal this season, softened the blow.The agreement, signed in 2018, had been trumpeted as groundbreaking then, a contract worth more than a billion euros per season (about $1.2 billion) for rights to matches in France’s top two domestic divisions. That symbolic figure was one that team executives had long hoped to realize, and one so large that it led them to part ways with the league’s partner, Canal+.But the financial boost — MediaPro had agreed to pay almost 60 percent more than the previous agreement — also led teams to spend more on recruitment in the last off-season, a decision that many are now regretting.“They had anticipated the higher TV rates, and this comes as a shock for most people,” said the chief executive, who asked not to be identified because talks to stabilize the league’s finances continue. He predicted some clubs would look to foreign investors to bail them out in return for heavily discounted equity or outright sales.The French league includes world-class players like Kylian Mbappé and brands like Paris St.-Germain and Olympique Lyonnais, but many of its clubs struggle to match the spending of rivals in England, Spain and Germany.Credit…Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockSome of the comfort that led the clubs to spend freely can be traced to ebullient comments made by MediaPro’s chief executive, Jaume Roures, at the height of the pandemic’s first wave in the spring, when global sports had stopped and the French league’s main broadcast partners at the time, Canal+ and beIN Sports, announced they would suspend their rights payments.In April, Roures, in an interview with the sports daily L’Equipe, vowed to take over the broadcast rights to French games early if the season restarted in the summer and the league’s partners, Canal+ and beIN Sports, opted out. “To be a good Samaritan is to pay what you owe,” Roures said at the time.But a closer look at the deal French league officials signed with MediaPro, a company started by Roures and two partners that is now largely controlled and financed by a little-known Chinese group, suggests several red flags were ignored in pursuit of the richest offer.MediaPro would not have been allowed to enter the auction for the French rights, for example, had the league not changed the tender process to allow agencies like MediaPro, which did not have a platform in France to broadcast games, to take part.Then, after the agreement was struck, it took several months for an official contract to be signed, and when it was it did not include the type of bank guarantees that would have proved MediaPro would be able to make good on the payments it had promised.French soccer officials are scrambling to find a new television partner before the end of the year.Credit…Daniel Cole/Associated PressThere were other warning signs, too. Another huge deal signed by MediaPro, the stunning capture of rights to Italy’s Serie A, collapsed around the same time it was in talks about its French acquisition. Part of the reason was the company was unable to provide a guarantee for much of the amount it had promised the league.And four years ago, the company’s business practices came under further scrutiny when a United States affiliate, Imagina Media Audiovisual, was implicated in the FIFA bribery scandal. Earlier this year, Gerard Romy, one of MediaPro’s founders, was charged with wire fraud, money laundering and racketeering conspiracy in connection with the case.Roures had looked to blame the impact of the coronavirus when he called for the French league to renegotiate its MediaPro deal in October. But with stadiums largely off-limits to fans, viewing figures for soccer have remained robust across Europe; in some cases, ratings have soared.Didier Quillot, the L.F.P. chief executive who led the tender process, left his post in September with a payment of about $1.8 million, much of which was based on his negotiating the deal with MediaPro. Quillot in recent days has said he is prepared to repay any bonus he received that was linked to the rights sale.MediaPro’s troubles started when it failed to secure 100 percent of the rights, losing a crucial package that included the first pick of the week’s top game to beIN Sports, a Qatar-backed broadcaster. BeIN sold those rights to Canal+, reducing the need for the network, France’s biggest pay television operator, to make a deal with MediaPro for the other games.Unable to find a home for its matches, MediaPro started a subscription service for them, Téléfoot.Credit…Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat left MediaPro holding expensive rights without the most viable outlet willing to buy them. Seeking a way out, it sought to start its own channel, Téléfoot, which had little to offer subscribers beyond the matches it had bought. Sales of subscriptions offered on other, smaller platforms failed to reach meaningful numbers, though, leaving MediaPro to burn through millions of dollars with little hope of breaking even.Faced with that crisis, MediaPro failed to make a payment of 172 million euros ($208 million) when the French league started its new season in October. It skipped another one for 152.5 million euros this month.MediaPro moved to defend itself from litigation by taking advantage of new laws passed to protect companies during the coronavirus crisis. Unable to insist on recouping what it was owed, the French league was forced into a mediation process that ended last week with MediaPro agreeing to return only 100 million euros ($121 million).“Clubs are desperately in need of cash; that’s why the league has accepted this very bad offer from MediaPro,” said Pierre Maes, a consultant and author of “Le Business des Droits TV du Foot,” a book on the soccer rights market.The league — which has so far kept its teams afloat with bank loans in lieu of the missing broadcast payments — is now scrambling to find a television partner, most likely Canal+, to come to the rescue. One thing is almost certain: The price the league will be forced to accept will not be celebrated in the manner the MediaPro deal was.“Whatever can be done to deliver cash to clubs, they’ll do it,” Maes said. He predicted that any new agreement for the rights now could bring about half of what MediaPro had promised to pay.“Canal+ is today in a position to correct the market,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More