Frank Dunne

Italy’s Lega Serie A is set to earn €973m ($1.13bn) per season for its domestic live rights in the next cycle following last week’s deals with Sky and Perform. This can be considered either a success or a failure depending on which benchmark it is measured against

The Premier League’s 20 clubs are unconcerned about the small drop in the value of their domestic live rights in the next cycle, following deals this month with BT and Amazon that brought the protracted sales process to a close.

Italy’s Lega Serie A moved into private negotiations with broadcasters this week for rights to the next three seasons, from 2018-19 to 2020-21, having cancelled its contract with Mediapro.

Lega Serie A and its media-rights adviser Infront are on a collision course with the Mediapro agency, which was appointed intermediary for the league’s domestic live rights, after the Spanish agency failed to meet this week’s deadline to pay its guarantee. 

Geopolitics, as much as commerce, is likely to determine whether the value of Coppa Italia international rights continues to increase dramatically.

Second-round bids for Asian Football Confederation media and marketing rights were due on Thursday evening (April 26) Malaysia time. It is understood none of the bidders from the first round, which included agencies and broadcasters, have been eliminated from the process.

Next week’s first-round bids for Asian Football Confederation commercial rights are expected to see an unprecedented level of competition between all major sports-rights agencies.

FC Diez Media, the joint venture between the IMG agency and digital media company Perform, is making radical changes to the way Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana media rights are sold, to drive competition in the marketplace and recoup their aggressive minimum guarantee.

Perform and the IMG agency this week unveiled their new joint venture, FC Diez Media, for the commercialisation of marketing and media rights to the Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana. Perform’s Bruno Rocha talked to TV Sports Markets about the thinking behind the joint venture’s commercial strategy.

After successive 70-per-cent rises in the last two cycles there were only two sets of circumstances in which the Premier League was likely to secure another increase in the value of its domestic live rights.