2019 Champions League final: French Council of State rejects BFMTV's request against the CSA

The French Council of State rejected the request of the private, free-TV news channel BFMTV on 31/12/2019. The channel of the Altice France group had asked for the cancellation of its formal notice by the CSA (French audiovisual control), on 05/06/2019, following its broadcast of the final of the Champions League, Tottenham Hotspur FC - Liverpool FC (0-2) , on 01/06/2019. The formal notice is "a necessary prerequisite for the pronouncement of a sanction", as indicated in the CSA regulatory texts.

Altice France had decided to broadcast the final on BFMTV despite a CSA decision of 03/04/2019, in which it was indicated that this broadcast was incompatible with the channel's convention, which provides that "the service is devoted to information, in particular economic and financial information" and that  the programme can be supplemented, on Saturdays and Sundays, by reruns of sports anthology events".

Altice holds the broadcasting rights, in France, to the European cups for the 2018-2021 cycle and could broadcast the 2020 and 2021 finals on its free-TV channel RMC Story (broadcaster…