Nasser Al-Khelaifi is under formal investigation for alleged illegal conflict of interest, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed on Sunday, in a case built around a boardroom vote he took part in the day after his own broadcaster made a €100m bid for Ligue 1 rights.
The preliminary inquiry was opened in April 2026, handed to France’s financial anti-corruption police brigade after a formal complaint from anti-graft group Anticor, and made public on 20 September 2026.
At the centre of the case is a meeting of the Ligue de Football Professionnel board on the sale of Ligue 1 television rights. beIN Sports submitted a €100m offer for the rights to one match per week. The following day, on 14 July 2024, the LFP board, on which Al-Khelaifi sat as PSG president, agreed to enter exclusive negotiations with beIN and Britain’s DAZN.
The conflict allegation turns on three overlapping roles. Al-Khelaifi runs PSG, the country’s biggest club and the biggest beneficiary of any Ligue 1 rights deal. He chairs beIN Media Group, parent of the broadcaster that put in the €100m bid. And he sat on the LFP board that approved entering negotiations with beIN.
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Anticor alleges pressure on other club presidents
Anticor’s complaint says Al-Khelaifi “took an interest of a nature to compromise his impartiality, independence, or objectivity in an operation where he held supervisory responsibilities”. A source close to the case told AFP that he also pressured other Ligue 1 club presidents to back the beIN bid.
His lawyer, Renaud Semerdjian, rejected the allegations outright.
“The allegations made against Mr Nasser al-Khelaifi are without basis, neither legally nor factually,” he told AFP, adding that his client had “always acted in an independent, impartial and objective manner.”
DAZN pulled out and the LFP built its own channel
The rights package that triggered the investigation has since collapsed. DAZN paid €400m for eight matches per matchday and beIN €100m for the ninth, but DAZN withdrew from France after missing its subscriber targets, and the LFP has since launched its own in-house streaming channel, Ligue+, to broadcast the league.
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A third open legal front
The probe is the third open front against Al-Khelaifi in France in recent years. In February 2025 he was charged with complicity in misuse of authority over shareholder voting at a media company, and an earlier corruption case linked to Qatar’s hosting of the 2017 and 2019 World Athletics Championships was annulled by France’s Court of Cassation in February 2023.
Al-Khelaifi’s power in football extends well beyond Paris and Doha. He also chairs European Football Clubs, the body known as the European Club Association until it rebranded in October 2025, and in that role represents Europe’s clubs in negotiations with UEFA and FIFA over the international calendar and the Champions League format.
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