Luckily for me, a French music TV station has the free-to-air rights to Super Bowl 50 and will be showing the game live at 12:30 local time tonight/tomorrow morning.

Why does station W9 bother with the championship of American football?

The French sports newspaper L’Equipe asked that question, and others, of the director general of the station.

The short answer?

W9 has nothing else that can pull as many as 500,000 viewers in the middle of the night.

BeIN sports, owned by Qatar news station Al Jazeera, apparently is the dominant entity in France (as it was in Abu Dhabi), when it comes to most televised sports. Or, at least, those I care about.

BeIN has the French rights to the NFL, which probably is not of particular significance here, but W9 has the rights to the Super Bowl, which apparently has some sort of value — though it is hard to imagine the NFL holding W9 hostage for some huge sum over a one-off game kicking off at 12:30 a.m.

The league presumably is still in the fan-building mode when it comes to continental Europe. The first goal ought to be … making sure Euros know about the NFL product.

W9’s director general said the station had 210,000 viewers for Super Bowl 49 last year, but they usually are in the 300,000 to 500,000 range for the NFL’s championship game.

Jerome Fouquet said 300,000-plus viewers “puts us ahead of many targets at this late hour. It is important that this generates viewings but also essential to our place in the market. For us it is a very big event for creating appetite around W9.”

In addition to the football action, the halftime show is very big, Fouquet said, as well as pre-game events, too, considering W9’s status as a music provider.

“Absolutely,” he told L’Equipe. “This contributes to the interest we have for the Super Bowl. Especially this year with the programming Coldplay, Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars.

“There are not many musical events with such big stars and such a staging.

“Besides, annually, on Monday morning, all … TVs and radios broadcast an excerpt of the concert, even before the result of the match. Because it is the most universal part.”

I can take or leave the musical acts, but I am very interested in the game; I saw all of them through 2009, then missed a couple while in Abu Dhabi.

I would like to get back to watching the game, even with French commentary.

I’m glad someone here in France is showing it at no cost — even if it seems like they are more interested in Coldplay.