Laurent Prud'homme, CEO of the L'Equipe group: "In 2023, our digital income will exceed our paper income"<

Appointed a year ago at the head of the L’Equipe group, Laurent Prud’homme draws up a positive assessment of a company that took advantage of the COVVI-19 health crisis to reform deeply.The Director General of the Group welcomes the results carried by television, with the Channel L’Equipe and the Digital.Without abandoning paper.

What consequences had the Pandemic on the health of the L’Equipe group? It has particularly resisted.I would say even better: this pandemic was an opportunity since it forced us to think back, to transform ourselves.The question that drives me is how do we get bounced?Because the challenge of tomorrow is the digital transition, it is our absolute priority.And we are there.

You have displayed a loss of 20 million euros for 2020.What is the balance sheet for 2021?And your forecasts? The situation has improved significantly, even if I cannot yet give the figures for 2021.But we should have a happy new year, with prospects for returning to balance faster than expected.For what?Because the group has been radically transformed for two years, has accelerated its transformation and has developed its digital income, which today represents 33% of turnover.In 2023, our digital income will exceed our paper income.

You have started a social plan with around fifty people: where is it? It is finished, this page turns.It is now important to restore confidence, meaning and value to the employees of this house.And set a course.

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The acquisition of TV rights of sports competitions for the L'Equipe channel as well as the development of streaming on your platforms the future of the group? Not only.Paper, when you innovate, when you have an event, is also a growth vector and it must participate in digital transformation.Just as much as the chain or our digital platform.The L'Equipe channel benefited from this crisis with very numerous French people in front of television.We were able to show opportunism by recovering rights from holders who no longer managed to disseminate their competitions on paid channels of the cable or satellite.The deflation of this bubble, with prices yesterday sometimes exorbitant on sports rights, allows us today to enrich our offer of content with for example the 24 hours Dumans, the Diamond League of Athletics, Alpine skiing,Copa America de Football or the Super Bowl.Everything is changing with sports federations holding rights that create and market their own content.Remember that, when the Dumans 24 hours departure, the L'Equipe channel is the first chain in France!We do with the Super Bowl the same audience as TF1 recorded when it broadcast it.So much so that the team is the biggest increase in TNT last year with CNews.

With what federations do you have partnerships? We have for example signed with the French Athletics Federation, which created its own platform, Athlé TV.We thus broadcast, free and live, all the big meetings, as well as the French championships which it puts online.It's win-win: more visibility for her and content for the team.The convergence between free television and platforms is the future.We have just signed with international ski federations for French Alpine skiing World Cup events.

Digital, television and platforms as growth relay: is it the death of paper in the long term? It is quite the opposite: the place of the paper is central.The newspaper is the group's haute couture, the showcase of our journalistic excellence.On the L'Equipe brand, the audience figures for its digital offer shows its power: with two new universes launched in May - the Explore team and the Live Team - we display an average of 2.8million visitorsunique daily.And up to 4.4 last weekend: it's colossal.We finished the year 2021 with 340.000 digital subscribers, an increase of 14% compared to the previous year.Paper, TV and digital are part of the same ecosystem.For example, when we broadcast biathlon, a discipline that has a few thousand licensees in France, we record a 1.5million audience of viewers.For what?Because the newspaper and our platform will have told upstream, deciphered the event.And we constantly enrich our offer: thus the Live Team will broadcast the tennis tournaments of Montpellier, Marseille, Metz and Lyon on Monday on Monday Monday.

You say you have "event" The editorial line of everyday life: that is to say? The cessation of sports competitions during the first confinement forced us to accelerate this step aside: to consider sport not as a universe only ofcompetitions, but in all its dimensions, political, economic, societal.Especially by the affairs that affect it, whether it be doping, sexual violence or financial scandals.

At the risk of putting you on the back of the major federations with which the team maintains historical links? This is called independence.And a large number of new subscribers join us for these surveys and long formats.

Is football remains your raw material? Of course, it has not moved.It remains major sport.

With a locomotive PSG? Also.Messi's arrival in this club was the biggest sale in newsstands in 2021.

Why, for Ligue 2, Amazon comes to the team when it could have negotiated with other channels? Because the Amaury group, owner of the team, is an independent, family company, which is notbacked by an industrial group.The L'Equipe channel is the only one in TNT held by a press group.This freedom, this independence and our reactivity strengthen the desirability.

Does this partnership with Amazon have other reasons? Yes.We have created a company - 21 productions - which makes us the Amazon delegate producer on Ligue 1 and Ligue 2.All journalists and consultants who comment on matches are collaborators of this subsidiary.And we produce their Sunday evening show.In all humility, I think that Amazon came to seek the expertise and know-how of our group.More generally, GAFA are also partners.Thus, we will establish in April a partnership, commarketing agreement, with Google for the recruitment of our digital subscribers.We should also sign one with Facebook.Even if we are very vigilant, like the whole of the French press, on the question of the remuneration of our contents.