Italy’s top football league, Lega Serie A, is seeking bids of about €225 million ($301.5 million) over three years, from 2012-13 to 2014-15, for media rights to the Serie A championship which failed to elicit any bids when the league put them up for auction last year.
As expected, the league has split its rights for free-to-air highlights from one exclusive package covering all of Sunday into two smaller packages, after failing to agree deals at the original reserve price and in subsequent private negotiations.
Package A has a reserve price of €10 million per season and package B of €15 million per season. The league had earlier rejected a bid by state broadcaster Rai for the exclusive rights for the whole day thought to be worth between €7 million and €8 million per season.
Rai is likely to be challenged by Sky Italia, which is reported by the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper to be considering a bid for rights for its free-to-air channel Cielo.
Rai is the favourite to pick up the radio rights, for which the league is asking €3.3 million per season.
The league has also retendered pay-television highlights rights for both satellite and digital-terrestrial platforms.
The league is advised by the Infront Sports & Media agency.