Milan ¨C DAZN and Sky will keep the rights to screen live Serie A matches in Italy for the next five seasons after Italian clubs on Monday approved bids worth at least €4.5 billion ($4.8 billion), league officials said.
After four months of negotiations, the Serie A clubs had met in Milan on Monday to review final offers tabled by streaming services DAZN and Sky that amounted to some €900 million per year until the end of the 2028-29 season, just below the annual value for the current agreement.
Seventeen of the 20 clubs backed the offer, but the decision drew sharp criticism from Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis.
¡°It¡¯s a total defeat for Italian soccer, these deals will be the death of Italian soccer,¡± he told reporters, interrupting Serie A Chief Executive Luigi De Siervo during a media briefing.
TV rights are a crucial source of revenue for Serie A teams such as this year¡¯s champion Napoli, Juventus and Milanese clubs AC Milan and Inter.
DAZN offered €700 million to screen all Serie A matches for the five seasons in Italy, said De Siervo.
Comcast¡¯s unit Sky Italia offered €200 million to co-broadcast three out of 10 Serie A games per matchday.
Under a three-year deal expiring next June, Serie A generates €930 million per season from the sale of its TV rights in Italy, with DAZN again holding the lion¡¯s share.
The new deals may match or even top the value of those current contracts, when including some variable components linked to revenue shares, and hit €1 billion, De Siervo said.
The value of the rights for Serie A are well below what is generated by the English Premier League.
That means more of the world¡¯s top players are drawn to the English clubs ¡ª a reverse of the situation in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Italian league was the pinnacle of European soccer.
In recent months, Serie A explored the creation of a media platform to distribute matches to other TV outlets as well as the launch of a bespoke live video subscription service.
¡°Figures were below our initial expectations and below our current contracts ... but I think we were right to continue our relationship with Sky and DAZN,¡± Torino chairman Urbano Cairo told reporters after the meeting.
¡°Creating a Serie A TV channel now ... would had meant add further risk to a risky business as soccer,¡± added Cairo, who runs his own media group.
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