ESPN, who already acquired the rights to the Serie A championship for the next three seasons, will add the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa to its Italian soccer coverage.
According to Lega Serie A, it was at the latest league assembly where president Gaetano Miccichè, along with all the 20 Serie A clubs that the news was revealed.
League advisor Infront presented the assembly with all the offers received for the right to broadcast the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa for the 2018-21 seasons in certain geographical locations. As we reported a while back, there was no interest from IMG and their competitors to acquire the international rights and then distribute them they like did with Serie A league matches.
Hence why private negotiations took place directly between Infront and the interested broadcasters. The assembly was satisfied with some of the offers received and assigned the rights, while for other territories there are still negotiations taking place.
Given the growth of OTT, will be interesting to see what will happen in the other territories that currently broadcast Serie A. Will IMG’s Serie A Pass service also get these rights? What about DAZN, Bein Sports, Eleven Sports, etc. ?
President Gaetano Miccichè said the following:
“We concluded some negotiations that were economically beneficial, like the sale of the rights to broadcast the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa internationally in certain countries. For the USA, the rights were acquired by ESPN, one of the largest broadcasters in the world, whom IMG sold the league matches to with a reach of over 80 million American homes. For Italian football this is quite revealing.”
At this time it has not been announced if the games will be on TV or via ESPN+, however given that ESPN only broadcasts one Serie A match per week on TV, logic would say all the newly acquired rights will be broadcast on their OTT streaming service.
