French footie joins the game.
With the acquisition of Multichoice by French media giant Canal+, top-division French football is now available to television audiences across Africa.
That means more interest in betting on France’s Ligue 1, so it’s worth finding out as much as possible about the league.
Ligue 1 is not unlike Germany’s Bundesliga at the moment, with one team very dominant and the rest fighting over the scraps – if qualification for European competition can be called scraps.
Paris Saint-Germain, or PSG, are the most decorated club in France and the most popular – and one of the wealthiest in the world after most of the shares were bought by Qatari government-backed investment fund Qatar Sports Investments in 2011.
Betway currently has PSG at odds of 1.14 to win Ligue 1 in 2025-26 and claim their 56th piece of silverware since being founded in 1970.
So, the championship race is a non-starter, so to speak. The Winner Without PSG is slightly more interesting with Olympique Marseille (currently two points behind PSG after 12 of 34 games played) at 1.90 and Lens (level with Marseille) at 5.50.
Value options lie in Top 5 and Top 6, where the likes of Lyon, Rennes and surprise packages Strasbourg could deliver fair returns.
There is also the relegation market, with Metz (1.72) looking doomed. There might be profit in taking a bearish view of Lorient (3.25), Brest (5.00) and Le Havre (5.50). Financial issues could hit Lyon (21.00 for the drop) and Paris FC (21.00) and send them down.
Marseille’s Mason Greenwood is 2.00 favourite to be top goalscorer but Strasbourg’s Joachin Panichelli could be a shrewd bet at 4.00 – especially if Greenwood gets a rumoured transfer to the English Premier League.
FYI: When talking about betting in French, you can use pari (masculine noun meaning “a bet”) or parier (verb, “to bet”). Other related terms include paris (plural noun for “bets”, seriously) and gageure (noun, “wager” or “boast”).
All odds correct at time of writing and subject to change.
