Tuesday night's remarkable 3-0 victory to overturn a 2-0 first-leg deficit in France's World Cup play-off against Ukraine was as uplifting for TF1's shares as for national pride.
Though the broadcaster rarely books a direct profit from tournaments such as the World Cup, the company's shares jumped by more than 5 percent on Wednesday morning as investors looked forward to the indirect gains from improved relationships with advertisers, the pull of a young, male audience and a boost to brand awareness.
"If you have the national team in (the tournament), it makes a huge difference," said Claudio Aspesi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. "Placing your best customers' ads in the best slots in the right games will win you loyalty and goodwill from customers.
"We had assumed for 2014-15 fundamentally no growth ... but we were starting from the assumption that France would not qualify."
TF1's annual group revenue is expected to drop by 4 percent this year to 2.5 billion euros (2.09 billion pounds), according to the average of analyst forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, before rising 2.8 percent to 2.6 billion euros in 2014.
For the previous World Cup in 2010, TF1 spent about 120 million euros on broadcasting rights for the tournament in South Africa and barely broke even after re-selling 33 million euros worth of matches, Aspesi said.
A Paris-based trader said that France's qualification for the Rio tournament next summer could lift TF1's operating profit by as much as 10 percent.
A TF1 spokeswoman was unavailable for comment.
Despite the jump in the share price and rebound in confidence in France's football stars, the actual revenue boost could fall short of estimates in an economy struggling with record unemployment and anaemic growth.
"I don't think it is going to be a big boost ... TF1 is the only leading broadcaster in major European markets where its structural position is getting weaker, not stronger," said Liberum Capital analyst Ian Whittaker, citing rivals such as Germany's ProSiebenSat.1 and Italy's Mediaset.
"For the core channel, we are expecting a 3 percent ad increase in 2014. Given France's economy at the moment, it is all still relatively uncertain."
(Additional reporting by Raoul Sachs and Alexandre Boksenbaum-Granier; Editing by David Goodman)
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