Will three season tickets be needed to follow football? – Corriere.it

The Lega Serie A football championship is preparing to sell television rights for the next seasons from 2024, potentially until 2029. The auction has begun and the main broadcasting companies interested in broadcasting the matches — Sky, Mediaset, Rai, Dazn, Apple and Discovery — stepped up. Waiting to know who will win them, viewers are already starting to wonder how many season tickets they will have to sign up for to follow their favorite team and, above all, how much they will have to pay.

The announcement of the Lega Serie A

The last meeting of Lega Serie A was held on 16 May, when the tender was approved according to the guidelines also dictated by the Antitrust: that is, to favor the transfer to more operators, regardless of the reference platform, to avoid a monopoly, to reduce exclusive rights and to make the quality of services and price competitiveness prevail with the right degree of competitiveness. For the moment, the Italian scenario saw two main players, Sky and Dazn.For the next few seasons, the name of Amazon has also been mentioned. The maximum three-year limit for the assignment of television rights was recently abolished by the Melandri law, so the League took the opportunity as many as eight offer packages regulated over three timescales: three, four or five years. Once the envelopes have been opened, the negotiation phase begins with a maximum deadline of June 14 to send an answer.

Prices

The starting price indicated by the tender seems to be around one billion euros, in addition to what was achieved for the three-year period 2021-2024, when Dazn won the main package for 840 million and Sky the one for three games out of 10 per day in co-exclusive for 87.5 (for a total of 927.5 million euros). According to thethe Sun 24 Hoursthere is talk of 1 billion and 150 million in the case of a three-year agreement, 1 billion and 265 million for four years and, finally, a billion and 380 million per year until the 2028/29 season.

Standard or exclusive package

One of the packages fielded by the League, in fact, presents the same pattern. Without Tim’s support for the next few years, however, not sure that the sports streaming platform has the same economic forces at its disposal. The alternative to sell unique exclusives, attractive for broadcasting companies but less so for fans who would have to subscribe to two season tickets. These are packages where some matches are exclusively awarded to a broadcaster and the rest are won by another with different formulas: for example, 7+3 (as in the case of Sky and Dazn from 2018 to 2021), 8+2, 9+1. There is a combination that provides for the championship divided in half, therefore 5 matches for one and 5 for another, with the exclusive one-platform of all 10 matches straddling the holidays (interesting for realities like Amazon, which could yield new Prime subscribers also for purchases as well as for streaming).

The return of football in the clear

Among the options there is also total co-exclusivity (10 games with two or more broadcasters), the simplest solution for viewers who only need to subscribe or confirm one subscription. But among the big news is the return of football on free-to-air television: some of the Lega Serie A offers, in fact, offer the possibility to broadcast for free – then on Mediaset, Rai or the Sky Tv8 channel – the Saturday night match.