Serie A wants to buy Sky: the latest move by Lotito and De Siervo

Borrow two billion to buy Sky Italy. Or at least Sky Sports. The latest idea of A league it is a gamble: being faced with the need to define the most difficult tender for TV rights in its history, he evaluates – he told it The print – an unprecedented strategy. Buy the TV which until two years ago held the rights to all or almost all the matches and which has already secured the rights to the Champions League for over 200 million from 2024.

Serie A wants to buy Sky

The strategy is the couple’s latest idea Lotito-De Siervo. The president of Lazio and senator of Forza Italia, together with the managing director, have founded a newfound closeness by working on a strategy that aims to leave the distribution of championship matches to Lega Serie A as well. For years there has been talk of the possibility for the club to create their own channel. Today the two have changed course, aiming to take over an existing broadcaster. And who better than Sky, with its customer portfolio, its subscribers, its infrastructure. The obvious question is: where to get the money? Obviously, financial institutions would intervene here. Because the discussion of offers from investment funds and investment banks was on the agenda at the Lega Serie A meeting scheduled for 2 pm: the former would like to invest in the Lega in exchange for percentages of revenues. The others offer financing. And the Lotito-De Siervo couple is aiming for this: to take over Sky thanks to the money from a 2 billion loan. After all, Comcast TV announced a redundancy plan a few days ago that will involve another 800 workers, after 400 in 2021.

The strategies of Lotito and De Siervo on TV rights

Obviously, this strategy, which emerged in the press, has already encountered strong opposition among the clubs, which from the morning began to communicate, identifying in this idea a colossal own goal and a risk for everyone, heavily indebting a structure, that of Italian football, which every year closes its financial statements with a clear red mark. In short, a good part of the clubs is highly critical. But Lotito works to try to convince them. After all, today the question of TV rights has become his “obsession”: first he obtained, precisely on the suggestion of De Siervo, to modify the Melandri Law to sell the rights to the championship on a five-year rather than a three-year basis in the next tender. Then he tried, unsuccessfully, to get Parliament to pass the extension of another two years of the existing contract with Dazn and Sky for TV rights, in order to still guarantee figures close to one billion in proceeds for a two-year period. And before, he had worked alongside the government to check the installments of the Irpef debts of the football teams. In short, the move to try to take over Sky would be the umpteenth move by Lotito, paired with CEO De Siervo. But that already has many voices against.