TheChek News Flow

In a few hours, we’ll learn what Apple has in mind for an AI-infused version of iPhone software. We expect AI to deliver quality-of-life improvements to iOS over the next year. In recent history is any indication, AI will advance such that iOS 19 and iOS 20 are as influenced by AI as iOS 18. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I want to set a marker for how generative AI is working for me prior to Apple’s anticipated contribution.

ChatGPT and Claude

85% of my AI usage consists of ChatGPT on the Mac. First as a pinned tab in Safari, then as a first class Mac app.

ChatGPT is the first app I’ve positioned between Finder and Safari. I think that’s because of how it changes my relationship to the web, especially Google Search.

Another 10% of usage happens on ChatGPT for iPhone, especially ChatGPT Voice in hands-free situations. Anthropic’s Claude, another large language model-powered AI, has the other 5%.

I keep Perplexity installed on my iPhone, but I’m not convinced that I need it with premium ChatGPT. I’m aware of Google’s AI, but not its current name.

And I subscribe to X Premium (to avoid rate limits on the Mac app), but I have not invested time with Grok. Perhaps Grok gives X a reason to revive its Mac app.

Anyway, back to AI.

Math

A large language model doing sophisticated text prediction shouldn’t be good at math on its own. Neither am I. But ChatGPT is capable of recognizing when a conversational response isn’t enough. Using natural language input, ChatGPT detects when analysis is required.

Here’s a real world example. My best friend won a Cybertruck for free. He wanted to sell his Tesla Model 3 to me. I suggested a 36-month payment agreement between us, and he agreed. Simple enough.

However, his auto loan had 19 monthly payments remaining. Plus we wanted to include insurance coverage, registration, the extended warranty, and a little APR.

Explaining this in those words to ChatGPT gave us a dynamic payment plan that met all of those needs while showing its work. I’m certain that my friend could have crunched the numbers, but I appreciated being able to present the terms myself.

I’ve also use ChatGPT for setting realistic financial goals, creating budgets, and educating myself more on financial literacy. I value the conversational nature without burdening someone else.

Writing

Many think of having essays written for you when ChatGPT and writing are discussed. But I’m not inviting AI to replace me. Instead, my focus has been on using generative AI to sharpen my skills.

I enjoy and appreciate writing as a form of communication and storytelling such that I’ll never ask ChatGPT to write a first draft for me.

Instead, I prompt ChatGPT to be my second set of eyes on what I actually write myself. I use the Mac app Rocket Typist to expand the text shortcut ;edit into this:

Any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors? If so, concisely list in bullets, please:

Then I paste in a sentence, paragraph, or full text of my writing. I’ve been writing on 9to5Mac for 11 years and counting. Still, it’s a bit nerve-racking to push publish knowing that readers around the world will consume it.

ChatGPT has helped mitigate that anxiety, making publishing more enjoyable. If I were specifically tased with copy editing text, I would similarly use generative AI as a tool to sharpen my skills.

I also use ChatGPT to quickly answer queries that come up as I’m writing a story. The trick, for me, is to treat the results like Wikipedia. Never rely on the text that it returns. Instead, use it as a signal for where to point your own research. This narrowing feature certainly keeps me on my train of thought more than anything.

Health

Lastly, and perhaps most profound personally, is how I use ChatGPT for health. Specifically, my mental health.

I spend an hour with my therapist every other Monday morning. This greatly helps navigating life as a single father of two children under age 12. My goals are always simple: process experiences, assess my perspective, and celebrate each milestone.

With permission, I record each session with Voice Memos on my iPhone. Afterwards, I transcribe the text on my MacBook Air using the audio file and MacWhisper. Then I use a series of prompts to take my therapy session further.

I find that these prompts help fuel reflection, provoke new ares of thinking, and provide closure to a given period. I value having a defined endpoint and not getting lost of the depths in introspection.

More generally, ChatGPT has also been useful for prioritizing tasks and making decisions.

Analysis paralysis is real. ChatGPT helps. The trick for me? ChatGPT shows its work. Just like with natural language math prompts, ChatGPT provides reason to how it sorts tasks and suggests decisions.

These use cases and many more have amplified the usefulness of my iPhone and Mac. I’m eager to see what integrating generative AI at a system level does for Apple.

French-born and highly cultured, he originally wanted a career in theater but a part-time job at a luxury store in Paris led to a several key positions in fashion and retailing.

Georges Wichner, a leading fashion executive instrumental in building U.S. businesses for several top European designer brands, died May 10 at home in Miami with his family at his side, after a bout with cancer. He was 73.

Wichner was a highly sought after specialist in running U.S. subsidiaries for top European fashion houses including Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent. In addition, for many years he lectured on fashion and marketing at Kent State University’s fashion program in New York City, which he helped develop.

“He touched us in ways we will never forget,” said his son David-Nicolas Wichner. “He loved the finer things in life — design, wonderful meals, cars and tennis. I remember he was always so busy traveling for work, but in his later years, he found such joy spending more time with his family.” A year ago, when he retired, Georges Wichner moved from New York to be with his family.

“I am heartbroken now,” said Nicole Fischelis, the former Macy’s creative director and forecaster, Saks Fifth Avenue fashion director and Ferragamo senior vice president of fashion. “Georges was an amazing character, extremely cultured, a classy man with a great spirit and a lot of humor, and he possessed an amazing knowledge of the history of fashion. He was superb at connecting with people. He was a strong businessman but at the same time understood creativity and promoted it. He supported every single designer that he worked with.

“I have known Georges since I came to this country in 1991 to become the fashion director of Saks,” Fischelis added. “He was like a brother to me.”

Wichner was born and raised in France and served in the military. According to his biography listed on the Kent State University website, much of Wichner’s education centered around studying theater, where early on he wanted to build a career. He was also a philosophy student. While studying, to support himself he worked part time in a Paris luxury boutique which led to a full time job, which in turn led to wholesale positions, and eventually into running retail operations for Charles Jourdan.

Subsequently, he joined Yves Saint Laurent, where he opened and managed the designer’s store on the Champs-Élysées. Wichner worked for Saint Laurent for about nine years and developed a network of YSL boutiques in the U.S. He also became an American citizen.

After YSL, Wichner was named president and chief executive officer of Valentino USA Inc. in 1999. At the time, it was a new post, signaling the fashion house’s intent to grow substantially in America. After Valentino, Wichner served as president of Thierry Mugler for seven years. “Thierry Mugler was the most avant garde designer my father worked with,” his son said.

It was also one of Wichner’s toughest assignments. Wichner once told WWD he did no formal studies in the U.S. to gauge consumer awareness of the Mugler name. But informally, his impression was that people knew the designer’s fragrance, Angel, more than the fashion designer. “Angel, that’s easy to remember,” he said. “Thierry Mugler is not such an easy name to remember in a foreign language.”

Wichner also had stints as managing director of Revillon, the French furrier, as well as at Leonard, the French house known for its colorful prints, and Vivienne Tam. Late in his career he worked as a consultant doing what he was widely known for, helping European companies develop U.S business.

According to Kent State, he got involved with the school decades ago when he met designer Shannon Rodgers, who was developing the designer collection of the schools’ museum, the Shannon Rodgers & Kent State University Museum, and was seeking Valentino dresses from him. One thing led to another, and Wichner said he was willing to give lectures to the students and also advise Rodgers on French couture houses. Wichner joined the school’s advisory board, when Kent State developed its New York City program and created a course on luxury and marketing and how they interact.

In addition to his son David-Nicolas, Wichner is survived by his daughter in law, Pom; two grandchildren, Malineige and Mandarine; his brother, Alain, and his ex-wife Marie-Claire.

“One of the last things my father said to me was, ‘If we were at sea, we would have marines,'” his son said. “He was telling me he was so grateful that I helped keep him strong while he was sick.”

Chemena Kamali continues to mine Karl Lagerfeld's early years at the Paris house — to winning effect.

“Becoming Karl Lagerfeld,” the six-part TV series now streaming on Hulu, is sure to fan interest in the fashions of the early ’70s, which have proven a winning starting point for Chloé’s new creative director Chemena Kamali.

The mood board for her resort 2025 collection for the house captivated with photos of Lagerfeld’s Saint-Sulpice apartment, whose shell-shaped sofa and other Art Deco furnishings served as the set for many a fashion shoot, including one for Italian Vogue by David Bailey that focused on a 1975 Chloé collection.

Kamali cross-pollinated the colors and textures of that sumptuous apartment with Andy Warhol’s Factory universe, which collided with Lagerfeld’s clan in his underground movie “L’Amour.” She’s been a fanatic for the bohemian glamour of the period, exemplified by models Pat Cleveland, Jane Forth and Donna Jordan, also pinning photos from Billy Mane’s 1997 book “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” a favorite of hers since forever.

She applied just the right dose of all that eccentricity, decadence and eclecticism into covetable Chloé archetypes — frothy blouses, billowing Empire dresses, wispy camisole tops and groovy jeans — and tossed in a few outliers, including leather knee shorts, knit Bermudas, gold lamé tunics and used-car salesman checkered blazers.

“I wanted it to look really like a girl’s closet, not too merchandised, to give a personal feeling,” she said as racks of opulent black-and-gold fil coupé fabrics yielded to punchier colors, and quirkier styles like fringed leather jackets and extreme bell-bottoms. Buttery-soft Henleys, a logo T-shirt and squishy sneakers resembling boxing boots grounded ensembles in contemporary times.

Despite all the razor-sharp references plucked from Chloé’s vast visual archive, you can tell Kamali also designs instinctively, and with practicality in mind. The former is evident in her sudden penchant for accumulations of busy costume jewelry, which brought Loulou de la Falaise to mind, and the latter in her nifty leather bucket bag, which seals up when a gold ring is tugged down over the handles, and those distinctive sneakers in makeup colors and the suggestion of broderie anglaise in the mesh sections.

There’s humor, too, in the little pineapple and banana charms sprinkled on ballerina flats, bracelets and dangling from day bags. “There’s always a banana,” Kamali said with a laugh. “There is something spirited about this collection that is relatable rather than escapist.”

Mainstream parties look set to keep majority in EU Parliament, but nationalist parties perform strongly

Right-wing parties put on a show of strength in European Union elections, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to call national elections and underscoring German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s position lagging behind two rival parties, according to initial projections.

Sunday’s results still appeared to leave the mainstream pro-EU parties with a lock on power in Brussels. The center-right EU political grouping that now leads the bloc looked set to win the most seats in the European Parliament, boosting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s hopes of keeping her job for a second term. She has forged a close working relationship with the Biden administration.

Still, France’s far-right opposition party National Rally looked set to be among the pan-European election’s biggest winners. Marine Le Pen’s party appeared on target to become the largest single party in the European Parliament. Projections based on early ballot counts on Sunday evening suggested National Rally had gained roughly 31% of the vote, twice the support for Macron’s Renew Party.

After the French results, Macron announced that he was dissolving parliament to call fresh elections. His party already lacked a majority in the National Assembly. The first round of the elections will take place June 30, followed by a second on July 7, Macron said.

“I have decided to give you back the choice of our parliamentary future through an election,” he said.

National Rally leader Jordan Bardella said Sunday’s results marked an “unprecedented rout for the powers that be,” adding that it was “day-one of the post-Macron era.”

In Germany, Scholz’s Social Democratic Party also apparently faced a drubbing. According to national exit polls, it was running third behind the far-right Alternative for Germany and the clear winner, Germany’s opposition center-right alliance.

The elections, held from Thursday through Sunday, were for the 720 members of the European Parliament. Up to 370 million voters were eligible according to EU figures, although turnout in the elections is usually modest.

While the European Parliament’s main powers are to approve or amend EU rules, laws and trade deals, the twice-decade vote offers a potent indicator of Europe’s political mood. The legislature also gets to approve the EU’s new leadership team.

Sunday’s results point to trouble for the EU leadership’s ability to pursue its environmental goals and indicate that pressure will mount to tighten migration rules. The vote is also likely to give a greater voice, at least within the parliament, to nationalist and left-wing critics of EU support for Ukraine.

Despite pro-EU parties’ setbacks, they appeared to hold enough seats to cobble together a majority of lawmakers to approve their priorities. An assessment from exit poll-aggregator Europe Elects suggested that center-right, centrist and center-left political blocs would secure 407 seats in the new parliament, or 57% of the chamber, according to the European Parliament press service based on provisional national results. Right-wing nationalist parties look set to secure roughly 155 votes.

While the results push European politics to the right, divisions among the nationalist and far-right EU parties are likely to blunt the impact of their gains. Some right-wing leaders have called for an alliance across the movement, but that appears unlikely.

The solid performance of the center-right EU bloc will bolster the chances of von der Leyen remaining at the EU’s helm. The first woman to hold the position, she needs backing from the bloc’s 27 national leaders and approval in the European Parliament to stay in power.

“We are the strongest party,” von der Leyen said at a rally as results came in. “We are the anchor of stability and voters acknowledged our leadership during the last five years.”

The German result looks set to inject fresh instability in the coalition government, which has become increasingly fractious as national elections approach in 2025. There have been some voices in the three-party coalition calling for early elections. The government will face further tests of its political fortunes in regional elections later this year.

Macron’s decision to call legislative elections is a big gamble, which depends on Le Pen’s victory on Sunday producing a backlash among voters who fear the National Rally taking power. In the past, centrist, leftist and center-right have forged winning alliances against Le Pen in the final round of presidential elections.

Thibault Francois, a National Rally lawmaker and the party’s European affairs spokesman, said Macron’s decision was inevitable.

“He was unable to rule after such a defeat,” he said.

Among other successful results from nationalist parties, exit polls suggested Austria’s Freedom Party came first. In the Netherlands, the party of Geert Wilders, an antimigrant firebrand who won last November’s national elections, picked up several seats in the Parliament, final results showed, although his party finished second to a center-left Green alliance.

One of the EU’s most powerful conservative leaders also performed well: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party is expected to come first, with around 28.5% of the vote, according to the European Parliament, based on provisional results.

Meloni, who won power in 2022 on a strong antimigration platform but has repositioned herself as a mainstream conservative, playing down her far-right roots, is being courted by the center-right and the hard right to form an alliance in Brussels.

In Poland, the current centrist government scored another win over the previous right-wing conservative government following national elections last year. Nationalist forces performed weakly in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Spain’s two center-left and center-right parties were far ahead of more radical parties, according to exit polls.

And while veteran Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party came first in his country’s vote, with 44%, a new opposition party formed by a former Orban ally scored well, at 31%, according to exit polls. After most results were in, Orban claimed victory.

“Stop migration, stop gender, stop war…stop Brussels,” Orban said.

Among the evening’s biggest losers were Europe’s green parties, which performed well five years ago on the back of mounting concerns about climate change. Continent-wide protests from farmers and rising voter concerns about the costs from green policies have since shifted the political mood.

The continent’s most powerful Green Party, the junior coalition party in Scholz’s government, picked up just 12% of the vote, down from over 20% in 2019.

Weak aeroplane delivery figures this week could deliver another blow to its credit outlook

Boeing, a manufacturing pioneer, linchpin of the US defence business and survivor of a century of turbulence in the aviation industry, is facing a once-unthinkable prospect: having its debt rating cut to junk.

The aerospace giant is scheduled to detail its aeroplane deliveries for the month of May on Tuesday. The figures are expected to be a disappointment, and investors and analysts will be watching to see if the company can crank up deliveries — and free cash flow — in the second half of the year in the hopes of avoiding a downgrade.

Weak aircraft deliveries, an unclear recovery picture and a prolonged period of high debt relative to earnings have been cited by rating agencies as factors that could lead to them cutting Boeing’s rating to junk.

A drop to junk status could make it more expensive for Boeing to borrow. The sheer size of its capital structure, with nearly $58bn in overall debt, may prove difficult for high-yield buyers to digest a rush of new supply easily — sparking price swings. Boeing’s leadership has stressed the importance of maintaining investment-grade status, and investors and analysts expect the company to avoid a downgrade if at all possible.

“A balance sheet that size would have a lot of challenges financing itself in the high-yield market”, making it “a really difficult transition to high-yield”, said one asset manager who holds Boeing bonds.

“We would expect some volatility on a downgrade for sure,” said another portfolio manager at a big asset manager who holds Boeing bonds.

The aerospace giant is hovering at the lowest level of the investment-grade universe, after Moody’s joined the other top rating agencies in reducing its credit quality to “Baa3” in April — known as “BBB-minus” by its peers. At the same time, Moody’s, S&P and Fitch all lowered their outlooks on the company to “negative” — a move that can signal a higher probability of additional future downgrades.

Investors noted that Boeing’s bonds are already trading between the bottom of the investment-grade world and the top of the high-yield ladder, in a sign of its challenges to date and the changes made to its credit rating.

Among Boeing’s larger and more liquid bonds, one issued in 2020 and maturing in 2050 currently yields roughly 6.5 per cent. Another maturing in 2030 yields just under 6 per cent, while a bond maturing in 2025 yields just over 6 per cent.

Those levels are higher than the average for all triple-B rated bonds, which stood at 5.7 per cent on Thursday, according to Ice BofA data. But they are lower than the average yield of 6.7 per cent for all double-B rated bonds, the highest rung of junk.

A company spokesperson declined to comment. Chief financial officer Brian West told investors in April that as Boeing managed its balance sheet, along with improving manufacturing and the supply chain, it would “prioritise the investment-grade rating”.

Boeing has struggled with free cash flow this year. It used nearly $4bn cash in the first quarter and now expects an outflow for the year.

A ratings committee would “weigh heavily” a scenario in which Boeing’s deliveries, and therefore its free cash flow, do not improve over the course of the year, said Moody's analyst Jonathan Root.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has capped Boeing’s production of the 737 Max at no more than 38 per month. Delivering near that cap will be important for Boeing’s rating, Root said, as “a functioning commercial airplanes business forgives many sins”.

“What’s important is not the May number [of deliveries], but the trend, the slope of the line from July through December,” he said.

Six years ago, before the first 737 Max crash off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, Boeing was rated “A” or “A2”— four notches above junk—by all three rating agencies. When a second jet crashed five months later, regulators worldwide grounded the jet for nearly two years.

The agencies dropped their ratings in late 2019 and early 2020, then again in the spring of 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in the US, devastating demand for air travel and jets and disrupting the plane maker’s supply chain.

Boeing tapped the bond market for $25bn in April 2020 to help it weather the pandemic. It raised another $10bn six weeks ago to bolster its liquidity, as it anticipates $12bn in maturities coming due over the next two years.

Boeing’s leverage — the ratio of its total debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation — makes it an “outlier” among companies with the same credit rating, said Fitch Ratings analyst Nicholas Varone. The multiple is expected to fall from the “mid-teens” in 2024 to four times ebitda by 2026.

The “lack of a pathway back” to improved production and deliveries, and the resulting hit to cash flow, would be one factor that could trigger a downgrade to junk, Varone said. But he said he expected the company to improve in the next six to 12 months and that it was more likely to keep its investment-grade rating rather than lose it.

Investors are comforted by the reality of the commercial aviation market, where airlines only have two suppliers: Boeing and its rival Airbus.

“We think there’s a pretty low likelihood that it’ll actually get downgraded,” said Adam Abbas, head of fixed income at Harris Associates, a Boeing bondholder. “It’s a duopoly,” he noted, adding that “too much negativity is built in . . . to assume that Boeing’s issues today are going to be issues in three to five years”.

June 10 (Reuters) - Olympians including Dutch marathon runner Abdi Nageeye are using a new tool they hope will boost their medal chances this summer: tiny monitors that attach to the skin to track blood glucose levels.

Continuous glucose monitors or CGMs, were developed for use by diabetes patients but their makers, led by Abbott (ABT.N), opens new tab and Dexcom (DXCM.O), opens new tab, also spy opportunities in sports and wellness.

The Paris Olympics, which start on July 26, are an opportunity to showcase the technology - even though there is as yet no proof it can boost athletic performance.

"I do see a day where CGM is certainly going to be used outside of diabetes in a big way," said Dexcom's Chief Operating Officer Jacob Leach.

Diabetes patients remain the CGM specialist's commercial focus, he told Reuters, but Dexcom is also working with researchers on future use to optimise athletic performance. He would not disclose details.

The CGM market is already worth billions of dollars thanks to demand from diabetes patients, who use the coin-sized adhesive skin patches with a Bluetooth link to a smartphone instead of drawing blood through a finger stick. The readings help determine whether they need an insulin dose.

In March, Dexcom's Stelo device, targeting people with early-stage diabetes who are not on insulin, became the first CGM to win U.S. approval for purchase without a prescription. Launch is planned for this summer.

Abbott introduced a CGM product for amateur and elite sports users without diabetes in Europe as early as 2020 and has sponsored Kenyan marathon great Eliud Kipchoge and his team since 2021. Top athletes and their support staff have been using CGMs to optimise calorie intake and workout intensity as they prepare for sport events.

Abbott said it is targeting the non-diabetic consumer market. It is eyeing a U.S. launch for its Lingo device and smartphone app for health and wellbeing, available in Britain since January at a cost, opens new tab of 120-150 pounds ($152-$190) per month.

Sales of Abbott's FreeStyle Libre range, the most commonly used CGMs, rose 23% to $5.3 billion in 2023 on demand from diabetes patients who value their ease of use and monitoring precision. Dexcom saw 2023 revenue grow 24% to $3.6 billion.

Research firm GlobalData forecasts the lifestyle CGM market could grow nearly 15% a year to reach $9.9 billion by 2031, partly driven by users of weight-loss drugs like Wegovy who seek med-tech gadgets to support dieting efforts.

Other market researchers estimate the overall CGM market including diabetic use, with suppliers like Medtronic, opens new tab(MDT.N), opens new tab, will grow 9-10% annually over five years.

PREPARING FOR PARIS

Dutch marathoner Nageeye, who won silver at the Tokyo Olympics, said he and his coaches are monitoring blood glucose as an indicator of the body's available energy, part of his quest for an "effortless run".

CGM use has guided Nageeye, who has qualified for Paris, to work on sleeping and eating patterns so that he expends a minimum of energy during training.

"That's your energy, actually, that's your fuel. We have to monitor that," said Nageeye. His team has been sponsored, opens new tab by Abbott since April 2021.

Australian swimmer Chelsea Hodges, who won relay gold at the Tokyo Olympics, said CGMs had helped her remedy bouts of extreme exhaustion and dizziness during endurance training by making adjustments to her calorie intake and training times.

She spoke to Reuters while preparing for Paris, but recently ended her swimming career due to hip problems.

While companies see growth potential in the gadgets, sports nutrition scientists see a promising field of research.

"A big guesswork for endurance athletes has always been: am I training hard enough or am I training too hard? It seems with CGMs, we have a better understanding," said Associate Professor Filip Larsen of the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences.

Larsen, also chief science officer of sports performance consultancy firm svexa, opens new tab, said the firm has been analysing CGM data collected by several athletes and teams. He said svexa is not sponsored by any CGM maker.

Larsen warned, however, that there was little validated science yet on how to optimise an athlete's routines using CGMs.

"Most researchers cannot give you the exact answers. In five years, we will know 10 times as much as we do now."

But the field is abuzz with trials and experiments, including work on glucose-measuring contact lenses, opens new tab.

Sports dietician Greg Cox, associate professor at Australia's Bond University, has worked with swimmers including Hodges and rowers, triathletes and track athletes.

Results of a trial, opens new tab run by his team to test how not eating enough calories to sustain the intensity of exercise would affect endurance athletes' glucose readings have so far been inconclusive, and he said more research into CGMs was needed.

Both Cox and Larsen expressed scepticism about non-diabetic consumers using the technology for health and fitness without professional advice.

"What I see on social media is that normal, healthy people get scared when they had one banana and their blood glucose goes up really high for one hour. This is completely expected and a normal response," said Larsen.

Market leader Abbott told Reuters that understanding blood-glucose swings is key to managing one's metabolism for a healthier life.

"While glucose spikes are normal in healthy people, we also know that having fewer frequent and large spikes and crashes in glucose is associated with improved energy, mood, focus, sleep, and reduces cravings," a spokesperson said.

Partnership with private equity firm CVC has not yet borne fruit leaving clubs facing cash crunch

French football is on the verge of crisis just two years into an investment deal with private equity firm CVC Capital Partners, as the league operator struggles to find a broadcaster for the coming season and clubs brace for a summer cash crunch. 

Ligue de Football Professionnel, which operates the top two tiers of French football, has been trying to secure its next TV deal since October, but its ambitions of raising as much as €1bn from the sale have been dashed by weak demand.

Leonard Blavatnik-owned streamer DAZN and Qatari sports broadcaster beIN were the two main prospects for the 2024 to 2029 rights after the current deal with Amazon expired. 

However, the rights auction collapsed in October after failing to drum up a single bid at the reserve price of about €800mn. LFP has since been holding talks directly with interested parties, but no deal has yet materialised. LFP president Vincent Labrune has delayed the league’s annual general meeting, scheduled for the first week of June, until the end of the month, at which time he promised to “propose a definitive solution”.  

One media executive blamed “incompetence” at the league for the current situation, another called the auction process a “total shitshow”. 

A person close to the league disputed that a crisis was brewing and expressed confidence that a deal for the domestic broadcast rights would soon be reached. 

“There is a difficult negotiation under way, and the leadership of the league refuses to sell at a low price,” said the person. “But it was to be expected that the rights would not be easy to sell this cycle because it will take more time for the promise of the CVC deal to come good.”

The roots of the current crisis can be traced back to 2018, when the LFP chose to sell most of its broadcast rights to Mediapro, an unproven Chinese-backed company, for a record price of €800mn a year for 2020 to 2024. The decision to tie up with a new operator rather than long-standing partner Canal+ proved a fateful choice that is still casting a long shadow over French football.

The league season was curtailed when the pandemic hit in 2020. Mediapro stopped paying and ended up going bust in France, piling financial pressure on the clubs. In crisis, LFP sealed a cut-price deal with newcomer Amazon, further enraging Canal+ because they had paid far more for their smaller package of games under a licence with beIN.

The Vivendi-backed pay TV operator filed lawsuits against the LFP, and people close to the group say that Canal+ and Vivendi’s owner billionaire Vincent Bolloré still hold a grudge over the episode. Canal+ declined to comment.

The double hit of the pandemic and the collapsed media deal left some French football clubs close to bankruptcy, and the league warned of dire consequences if it failed to find outside investment.

“If we aren’t able to bring in new money to bounce back, the French Championship will become like the Slovenian Championship”, Labrune told a committee of French senators in 2021.

A few months later, the league agreed to sell a 13 per cent stake in a new entity responsible for all LFP’s commercial operations to CVC for €1.5bn. Upon agreeing the deal, CVC promised to “put its expertise, experience and relationships at the service of the LFP’s commercial subsidiary and support its business development ambitions”.

Labrune declared then that French football had been “saved” as clubs received an immediate cash injection. 

But now French professional football is once again in trouble. With just over 10 weeks to go until the new season kicks off, clubs are increasingly fearful of being left in the lurch without a media deal.

The LFP has mooted the idea of creating its own TV channel to carry live fixtures as a way of bypassing reticent broadcasters, according to several people with knowledge of the situation. However, analysts and media executives cast such a move as risky given the short amount of time before football restarts in the summer.  

With little visibility on future TV revenue, some French teams are unable to access bank lending and are preparing for a fire sale of players warned a senior executive at one top-tier club. “Clubs are desperate for money”, said another. “I don’t know how CVC allowed things to get so screwed up.”  

The plight of French football has not gone unnoticed by President Emmanuel Macron, who has discussed the situation directly with some club owners, according to people familiar with the matter. A visit to Paris by the Emir of Qatar in February also stoked speculation that state-owned beIN could be persuaded to step in.

However, people close to the process have cautioned that the Qatari broadcaster was unlikely to come to the league’s rescue, and would not seek a broadcast deal on its own.

“Domestic rights come with a lot of baggage. It’s a very political battle”, said one person involved in the discussions. 

The situation is complicated by the fact that beIN chair Nasser Al-Khelaïfi is also the chair of Paris Saint-Germain, the reigning French champions. Almost a quarter of Ligue 1’s TV money goes to PSG, yet it accounts for just 7 per cent of the club’s total income. For some of the smaller teams in the league, domestic broadcasting accounts for more than 60 per cent of revenue. 

Excluding money from player transfers, clubs in Ligue 1 and 2 suffered combined operating losses of €1.05bn in the 2022/23 season on revenue of €2.7bn, according to figures from French football’s financial regulator. Fees earned from selling players reduced losses to €300mn. 

The vast majority of clubs have given their backing to the CVC deal, both at the initial vote in 2022 and again last November. All clubs received money from the investment, although the amounts vary.

Yet it has still proved divisive in French football. Some club executives have questioned what, beyond the initial cash infusion, the firm has added and how its money has been distributed. Le Havre president Jean-Michel Roussier, a former Mediapro executive, told French senators that the deal was the “heist of the century” and has sued to have it cancelled.

Christophe Bouchet, former president of Olympique de Marseille, has described the deal as “catastrophic” and claims that many of those running clubs failed to read the agreement before signing up to it. 

The French league deal is one of several sports investments made by CVC in recent years, alongside moves into rugby, cricket, tennis and Spanish football. The firm had been in the running to invest in the German football league earlier this year, before widespread fan protests forced the entire process to be abandoned. Its investment in Premiership Rugby has also drawn scrutiny after three of the league’s 13 clubs collapsed last year. 

LFP, CVC and beIN declined to comment.

But people close to CVC and to LFP downplayed the bleakness of the situation in France, noting that the league’s other commercial deals — covering things such as betting data and sponsorship — had all been renewed at significantly increased rates. LFP recently appointed sports marketing agency Infront to handle the international rights sale, raising hopes of a quick deal, while the expectation remains that a domestic deal will get done before the season starts, the people said. 

But French football faces another challenge: a lack of reasons for viewers to tune in. Following the departures of Lionel Messi and Neymar from PSG last summer, Kylian Mbappé last week confirmed his move to European champions Real Madrid. The French league no longer has a global star, while the competition is increasingly dull — PSG have won the French league 10 times in the past 12 years.