French Ligue 1 on Ten Sports for three seasons!

The Zee Group owned Ten Sports has signed a three years multi-platform deal for south Asia to show the French Football League from this season, 2012/13 onwards. The deal has been negotiated by rights agency MP&Silva, which include 232 matches from the French top division - Ligue 1 along with games from the French League Cup plus a weekly Ligue 1 Preview show.

Ten Sports has been on the lookout to add quality football content to their channels after losing the rights to the Spanish La Liga from this season onwards to ESPN-Star Sports. Amongst the top 5 leagues in Europe - English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1 - only the French rights were still available.

The channels TenAction+ and Ten HD in the Ten stable of sports channel are the football specific channel which will from now on show French football.

The Zeel sports business CEO Atul Pande said, "Acquisition of the French League, one of the most competitive football leagues in Europe, underlines our commitment to football fans in the region as we continue providing the most entertaining content to our viewers, and an excellent promotional platform for our advertisers. We have established a strong tradition in building and strengthening top-class football properties on our channels with the reach of our networks, multiple media platforms and world-class match presentation."

The 20 team Ligue 1 will have 38 rounds of matches home-and-away with their star attractions being Olympique Lyonnais, Olympique Marseille and the high spending FC Paris Saint-Germain with their start-studded line-up which includes new signings Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Ezequiel Lavezzi and Thiago Silva besides Javier Pastore, Thiago Motta and Jérémy Ménez.

Andrea Radrizzani, the MP&Silva Group CEO, said on the deal, "We are delighted to facilitate the growth of French football in India. European football TV audiences in India are rapidly growing, attracting more interest from leagues, competitions, sponsors and players to satisfy this appetite."

Besides the French rights the Ten stable also has the rights to the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, the English Carling Cup, the Npower Football League (English Championship, League One, League Two) besides the Dutch Eredivisie and Scottish Premier League for the upcoming 2012/13 season.