L'Equipe: Case study

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on January 14, 2010 at 3:40 PM

The mobile offerings of L'Equipe are profitable, says Sébastien Valere, VP Marketing and Operations of L'Equipe 24/24 in France, speaking at the WAN-IFRA conference 'Using sports news to optimise your revenues'.

91% of the French have a mobile phone, with the operators including Orange, SFR, Bouygues and Free. 25% of mobile subscribers access the network through 3G, which means easier access to mobile data and surfing. He expects that two years from now, 75% of the population will have a smart phone, up from 35% now. The iPhone has been successful in France, and more devices will arrive on the market. Unlimited access subscriptions are offered, with subscriptions available for around €60 per month. Smart phones translate into massive content use.

L'Equipe is a global media brand, with a daily newspaper, a website with 5 million unique visitors per month, as well as offerings in television, radio and mobile. It has 18 million customers a month, mostly male, and reaches 50% of the upper-socio-professional advertising category. Usage peaks at night, although the goal is to reach people throughout the day.

Both sites and applications are offered. L'Equipe.fr is adapted for viewing on the web and the mobile web. They have also offered an iPhone app since last year, enabling users to read their newspaper on the iPhone. Their financial models are adapted to each platform.

Mobile content includes news, video and audio. News is organised by sport. A "killer app" with live scoring is available, showing updates from the game, who's in the team, and the score. Alerts are offered, and Valere notes that they are valued by his consumers.

"The iPhone brought an old habit back. People are paying for content," he said, adding that they offer the only paid app of its kind in France. The L'Equipe App costs €0.79, the FranceFootball App is €1.59, and alerts for your chosen team are €0.79 per season. Price is not an issue, he says, suggesting that if the L'Equipe App cost the same as FranceFootball, people would pay it. He has suggested to his industry colleagues that they make paid apps as well.

He notes the importance of innovation, of finding something that will make people talk about the application. It's important to offer services that will make people pay for the app, he says.

In France, the market will be ready for mobile advertising when an audience measurement system is available, even though there are already equipped customers, he says. People might just download your app and never use it again, he points out, so it's important to measure use and time spent, and to bring out a new version every three to six months to keep a presence in the Apple store and app stores for other phones.

The mobile activity of L'Equipe is profitable because it provides services for others, including other publishers, and including translation services. By using the same content on all platforms, costs are kept low. And advertising is on the rise. But it's important to maintain the apps and sites across many platforms.

Yet mobile is probably the biggest threat to the revenue made from their website, and they are monitoring it carefully.