Serie A: Sky and Mediaset get TV rights

For the three next seasons in a row Italian Serie A TV rights have been awarded to Sky and Mediaset in a deal that sees the league closing in on the magic €1bn per season. Mediaset is going to pay a lot less than half compared to Sky, despite the huge diffusion and increase in figures concerning digital terrestrial broadcasts.

The Italian Football League, Lega Calcio, revealed the packages and numbers involved though the official website www.digital-sat.it:

Sky Italia for the seasons 2012 – 2015, the exclusive rights for satellite pay-TV on a national basis. Sky has guaranteed the minimum requested from the announcement and that is €558m for 2012/13, €561m for 2013/14, and €564m for 2014/15.

RTI(Mediaset) for the sports seasons 2012 – 2015, the exclusive rights for digital terrestrial pay-TV on a national basis. RTI is engaged to pay the minimum price of €259m, €268m and €277m respectively for the three seasons.

“It is a very satisfactory result,” commented President Beretta. “The average annual of these two package? for the next two seasons is €829m, that is an increase of €37m per championship in respect to the average of the last biennium, that furthermore used to include archive rights, which now have been excluded. This target allows us to point at the goal of €1bn per season with great confidence”.

Beretta also added: “If we are looking at TV rights earnings of major European Leagues we are the the best seller on a national basis of our own rights. In respect of TV rights (Great Britain 1358, Italy 1000, Spain 670, France 655, Germany 472), only England can manage to sell better than we do, but we are convinced the difference is based on foreign rights, and can diminish in the next few years. In such a difficult moment for economy, Italian soccer can still manage to increase its own income and this is a confirmation of the recognized quality of the product we are in a position to offer.”