TV rights, piracy “costs” 300 million: Serie A wants a law to stop it

ROME – Serie A wants a law against piracy. This is, after the rejection of the Lotito amendment to extend the existing agreements with the TVs by 2 years, the move of the Italian teams to try to stay afloat. The next tender for TVs promises to be bloody: offers in free fall, therefore fewer resources for clubs, therefore the concrete specter of default for a movement that has not been able to adjust costs to the crisis or develop new forms of revenue. And now he hopes to recover millions of euros by fighting that portion of users who watch Serie A abusively.

Piracy: a “hole” worth three hundred million

Three hundred million euros: three hundred million stolen from the television rights market every year. According to a study by Serie A, the damage that the traffic of matches seen illegally by Italians causes to football might as well. In 2024 it will be necessary to reassign the rights to the championship and the market promises significantly lower figures: because Dazn is a monopolist who has no intention of replicating the figures of the last three years, which they have guaranteed – including Sky’s money – 927.5 million of euros per year. The rough estimate is that, in the next tender, the teams end up collecting about 300 million less: just what piracy takes away. This is why the clubs, rarely in such close positions, insist on having a law with the government that allows pirated sites to be blacked out more quickly – today the authorization of a judge is required, for example, with an inevitable extension of the times for the closure of the illegal portals – and to punish more severely both those who spread the images of matches without having the rights to them, and those who consume them. Never like today, Claudius Lotito he is the sole spokesman for these positions on a political scale. The president of Lazio did not physically participate in the assembly of the League: he was connected from Rome, where he physically defends the bench as a forced senator and as vice president of the budget commission.

Extension of TV rights

The problem is that even the government is starting to get fed up with its dual role: because the impression that in Parliament it represents not Molise where it was elected, but the world of football, is generalised. And so, his amendments – which the president of Lega Serie A Lorenzo Casini tried to talk to the clubs – they were rejected without too many questions. Both the law against piracy and the extension of contracts with TVs for another two years, which he would have wanted as a transitional rule given that from the next announcement, the TV rights of the championship can be sold for 5 years and no longer 3. A rule that but not only is it not liked by the TV channels which should have benefited from it, but which would have allowed them to “sell” the rights for the next 2 years out of competition, i.e. with private negotiations. The Serie A League has widely supported Lotito to re-propose a similar amendment and so it will be: it will only be necessary to find the right text in which to insert it. Because there are so many voices in support of Lotito in the football assembly: “These rules cost nothing to politics. For us, however, they can be vital”.