France’s Professional Football League (LFP) has revealed they will likely lose a total of €192m ($226m/£175m) from ticketing and hospitality revenues due to fan restrictions on games, according to L’Equipe.
The French newspaper reports a predicted loss of €125m in ticketing income between July and December this year due to COVID-19. In addition, clubs in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 can expect to lose €67m in hospitality income, according to details provided to the French government as part of a compensation request. The numbers also include French teams’ home fixtures in European competitions.
In France, stadium capacities are currently limited to 1,000 fans per game.
In addition, France’s national football body (FFF), has estimated that it will miss out on €23m due to not having fans in attendance for the Coupe de France final and the national side’s home games.
In September, the LFP announced it was seeking more than €100m in compensation from the national government as the 2020-21 season got underway with stadium capacities limited to 5,000 amid ongoing COVID-19 restrictions. The attendance cap on sports stadiums was supposed to be in place until at least October 31, but was slashed to just 1,000 from September 25.
The French government has already earmarked a total of between €100m and €120m to offset the lost ticketing and hospitality revenue across all French sports.
A government source told L’Équipe: “This is not a full compensation package. It was designed to help those most dependent on ticketing revenue.
“But we are not thinking about excluding anyone and football will be involved. All clubs will receive something, even the biggest, such as PSG [Paris Saint-Germain] or OM [Marseille].”
The LFP took out a government loan in May worth €224.5m to provide clubs with the broadcasting revenues they were due to receive for the remainder of the 2019-20 season, which was terminated in March due to the pandemic.
Image: KevFB/Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)/Edited for size
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