Ligue1+ Overhauls Its Offer to Win Back Subscribers for 2026-27
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
TL;DR: LFP Media has relaunched Ligue1+ as ‘the French football platform’ for 2026-27 — adding a ninth weekly match, a free Sunday-evening magazine and YouTube clip rights — as the league bets on fan engagement and free content to rebuild a paying audience after the DAZN collapse.
What Ligue1+ has changed
LFP Media CEO Olivier Bramly has relaunched the league’s streaming channel Ligue1+ as ‘the French football platform’, adding a ninth match per week — 36 extra matches across the season, including eight more PSG games — plus a Saturday multiplex and a free-to-air Sunday-evening magazine show. The refresh is organised around five pillars: entertainment, immersion, premium, authenticity and generosity, and adds YouTube clip rights.
Pricing has been reset for the new season at €19.99 a month, or €16.99 for loyal subscribers, from 1 August. It’s a deliberately fan-friendly package designed to rebuild trust after the messy end of the previous broadcast arrangement.
Why the league is going direct-to-consumer
After the DAZN deal collapsed, French football was left without a stable broadcast home — so the league is now operating its own D2C platform rather than relying on a third-party rights-holder. Owning distribution means owning the subscriber relationship, the data and the pricing, instead of handing all three to a partner.
The strategy leans on generosity as acquisition. Free content — the Sunday magazine, YouTube highlights — widens the top of the funnel and rebuilds habit, while the paid tier converts the most committed fans. It’s a classic freemium play adapted to sport: give away enough to build the audience, charge for the depth.
Marketing Minute’s read
Our take: this is a subscription-marketing problem as much as a football one. After a broken season, trust is the scarce asset, and Ligue1+ is rebuilding it with more value, fairer pricing and loyalty rewards rather than a hard sell. That’s the right sequence — earn the habit, then monetise it.
The risk in D2C is that the league now owns every hard part too: churn, customer service, marketing and the tech. Rights-holders used to absorb that complexity. Running your own platform is more control and more upside, but also more ways to disappoint fans directly.
What brands should do
If you’re moving to a direct model, lead with generosity to rebuild trust and habit before you optimise for revenue. Free, high-quality content at the top of the funnel is cheaper than paid acquisition and rebuilds the relationship a broken partnership damaged.
And treat the subscriber relationship as the prize. Owning distribution means owning data, pricing and loyalty — but it also means owning churn. Invest in retention and experience from day one, because in D2C the audience you win is only as valuable as the audience you keep.
Quick FAQ
What is Ligue1+?
Ligue1+ is the French football league’s own direct-to-consumer streaming platform, relaunched by LFP Media for 2026-27 with more matches, a free Sunday magazine and YouTube clip rights.
How much does Ligue1+ cost?
From 1 August it is priced at €19.99 a month, or €16.99 for loyal subscribers.
Why is the league running its own platform?
After the DAZN broadcast deal collapsed, the league opted to operate a D2C platform itself, owning the subscriber relationship, data and pricing rather than relying on a third-party rights-holder.
After a broken season, trust is the scarce asset — and you don’t rebuild it with a hard sell. Ligue1+ leading with free content and fair pricing is the right order of operations: earn the habit, then monetise it. The catch of going direct is that the league now owns every hard part too, churn included. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
In direct-to-consumer, lead with generosity to rebuild habit and trust — then remember you now own churn, service and retention too.
If you went direct-to-consumer tomorrow, are you set up to win the audience — or just to own the churn?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: Stratégies, Maxifoot, OneFootball.
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
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