Altice France unveils RMC Sport offering

While Canal+ struggles to handle the fallout from its loss of Ligue 1 rights to Spain’s Mediapro, rival service provider Altice France has unveiled its revamped RMC Sport offering, which will carry the group’s flagship sports content, UEFA Champions League and Europa League football.

Alain Weill

The RMC Sport service, which will comprise five channels, will debut on July 3, replacing the existing SFR Sport offering.

Altice France CEO Alain Weill, presenting the new service at the Gabriel studio on the Champs Elysée yesterday, told journalists that the award of Ligue 1 rights to Mediapro would have been “unthinkable a few weeks ago” and intimated that RMC Sport could be well-placed to find an audience in a sports broadcasting market that was in the process of being disrupted.

Weill also indicated that he could be open to a deal with Mediapro to eventually broadcast Ligue 1 football, and said that French professional football league president Didier Quillot had offered to introduce him to the Catalan broadcaster’s president. He said that it would be in Mediapro’s interest to work with other broadcasters to secure a return on its investment.

RMC Sport will air 343 matches each season in total from the Champions League and Europa League tournaments between now and 2021, along with coverage of the English Premier League.

Other competitions to be aired include English Premiership rugby, Diamond League athletics and WSB boxing.

RMC Sport will also offer a mix of sports news and magazine programmes, including daily news show Breaking Sport, Team Duga, presented by former footballer Christophe Dugarry, and daily flagship talk show Footissime.

Weill said that Altice had set a goal of achieving profitability within “three or four years” for RMC Sport.