One of the most delicate topics of the sports world is certainly made up of the football rights: the story is always long and tangled. The players are three: Italian Football Clubs, the Advisor, Infront Sports and Media (Infront Italy), and the broadcasters; three actors evidently seeking to maximize their profits. The attitude , however, seems to favor -more recently- a less confrontational and more constructive approach. January 20th 2014
After several months of discussions, on last 18th November, during the gathering of the Football League, the approval was unanimous by the 20 football teams of Serie A, with respect to the new proposal to be submitted to Infront italy.
It is to be remembered that Infront has lately handled all the rights on behalf of the Football League and thus also the delicate "game" of the television rights.
It is billions of euro that oxygenate the Clubs of Italian national football and very high commissions paid to the advisor.
In practice, the Lega Calcio holds again for the first three years 2015 to 2018 the same attitude as in recent years (a guaranteed minimum close to a billion euro per year), while for the second three-year period from 2018 to 2021 some 1 billion and 150 million Euros per year. In practice, the soccer league asks Infront to raise 960 million more than the previous bid. In fact, until today, Infront had secured 900 million minimum per season in the first period and 930 in the second, for a total of 5.49 billions, compared with 6.45 billions of the new proposal. In practice, a request quite high considering the economic crisis and a decline in appeal of tv football Serie A matches.
For the opposition part, the cast was mostly Sky and Mediaset in the matter of the renewal of the TV rights of football who have expressed some doubts.
The Italian Football League is comprised of many football clubs, some are in favor of the advisor Infront while other teams like Sassuolo, Inter, Verona, Fiorentina, and Sampdoria have expressed discontent calling into question the role itself of Infront and the huge commissions that the advisor earns (around 30/40 million per year, which is far over the amount earned by a team of second "area" of Serie A).
In addition, the exploitation of television rights concerning Italian Serie A football on foreign channels abroad, entrusted to MP & Silva of Riccardo Silva, in the 3 year period 2012-2015 have collectively guaranteed clubs only 350 million euro which are considered insufficient when compared to the European dimension, for example, the one of English football, every year.
The comparison is easily done at the level of the audience: the Serie A tv product is worth half of the Premier League but it is an eighth in terms of revenues. The club dissidents have raised controversy.
The same dissident companies have therefore proposed the idea to launch a personal Serie A thematic channel (Lega TV) to sell directly the tv rights as a "complete product", with an idea that could frighten both Sky and Mediaset, now in absolute duopoly between sat and digital terrestrial TV.
The question is simple: is this Lega TV just a serious deterrent to be used against offers considered inadequate or a proper television network project?
Infront surprisingly even reacted proving a will to support this idea proposing to become directly responsible for the activities of production and distribution of such potential new channel and immediately commissioned a research to Eurisco that defined the pool of potential television viewers interested in football in 23.3 million people. These viewers could leave the current tv offer (Sky-Mediaset) to switch to the new tv Lega TV project.
Infront is made up of a Board of five members and since 2011 it is part of the British private equity fund Bridgepoint, which also controls Dorna the current organizer and television rights holder of MotoGP and Superbike.
