On Monday, the management of the Roland-Garros tournament therefore decided. She chose the Amazon Prime Video service to the detriment of the antennas of France Télévisions, to broadcast the quarter-final between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. And this configuration does not at all please Delphine Ernotte, the president of the public audiovisual group. According to our information, the leader clearly expressed her dissatisfaction on Tuesday morning during a board of directors attended by representatives of parliament, the budget ministry and culture. “This decision by the French Tennis Federation deeply shocks me,” she said. It is a very bad blow to our partnership, while we have been participating for years in exposing and popularizing the tournament with all French people. And to add: “I find it extremely shocking to favor an American player like Amazon to the detriment of public service, especially on an event financed in whole or in part by public money. The reverse would be totally unimaginable in the United States.
To avoid controversy, while Amazon broadcasts part of the Roland-Garros matches by paying, the French Tennis Federation wanted to reassure. This Tuesday evening’s match will be “accessible free of charge and without restriction, in France, on Prime Video, mobile and Web applications”, indicated a press release. In reality, if the meeting is indeed broadcast for free, it will nevertheless be necessary to register for Amazon Prime Video, indicating its identity as well as its email. “The free distribution by Amazon is a decoy: it only serves to generate subscription and data. And it’s a real breach of equality when not all French people have access to high-speed Internet, ”laughed Delphine Ernotte during the Board of Directors.
For the president of France Télévisions, the decision of the FFT also comes to put in the spotlight a crucial file. “This event once again raises the question of the privatization of sport to the detriment of those who cannot afford it. It is urgent to protect free access to major events, especially for events financed by public money,” she insisted. Currently, around twenty so-called “major” sporting events are protected by unencrypted broadcasting thanks to a decree dating from December 2004. The government has just launched a consultation with a view to modernizing this list, while the giants Tech – in France, Amazon has also won 80% of Ligue 1 matches – are in the process of establishing themselves firmly in the sports rights market.
