The interest for Serie A TV rights for the next three seasons (2018-2021) has attracted a lot of contenders. In the last few days, it has been clear that Sky is not the only company interested in this triennial package.
A brand new contender might surprisingly be TIMVision. TIM’s board of advisors recently agreed to launch its TV broadcasting services, and since TIM has been official sponsor of Serie A for a while, it could jump right into the TV rights race.
There are also digital platforms such as Dazn, subsidiary of the Perform Group that after the Bundesliga experience might decide to expand its reach.
And there are also some confirmations, such as the Discovery Group, which operates with Eurosport and Dmax (and possesses channel 9, former Deejay TV). In an interview with ItalyToday, the senior director of sports Discovery Southern Europe, Philip Hecuba said: “in the last auction we submitted offers on one of the packages, so the topic interests us.”
As known, Discovery has already acquired the rights to the Olympics from 2018 to 2024 (Rai should be interested in buying a percentage of the broadcasting) and is doing a lot with swimming and athletics.Hecuba forecasted that in upcoming auctions “prices for television rights will continue to rise“, but above all, he confirmed that “at upcoming auctions, we will push more towards a very complex unpacking, to attract offers from an increasingly wider spectrum of actors, both regular television and pay TV“. Honestly speaking, this means the end of “the whole Serie A live exclusively on …” (although clearly, the fans hope to have those who transmits all of the games) and we must prepare for a slalom through different subscription formulas and different platforms.
Among other events targeted by Eurosport at this point, there may be Wimbledon and the 6 nations rugby (the Guinness Pro12 is already on schedule). Recent tests of the National team’s matches, moreover, have doubled Dmax’s ratings: the game against the All Blacks reached 0.5 million thousand viewers, the one with South Africa has exceeded 0.35 million and that Tonga one has gone beyond 0.4 million viewers.
