Eyebrows were raised when the French soccer governing body—the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) indicated it could deliver live Ligue 1 matches direct-to-consumer if unable to find a satisfactory bid for the 2024-2029 domestic rights for the national championship. Although this might appear on the surface to be a French issue, a major national soccer league moving its domestic broadcasts to a direct-to-consumer offering would be a watershed moment for sports leagues throughout the world—even though this case does come with some caveats. The largest one is that we interpret this as a bluff from the LFP, in part because the body has postponed this week’s scheduled general assembly—where it was expected to make this D2C announcement—until the end of…