Serie A clubs make proposal over Infront contract

Italy’s Serie A clubs have agreed in principle to extend Infront Sports & Media’s role as media-rights sales adviser to the Lega Serie A, the top division of Italian football, but not on the terms proposed by the agency, according to media reports.

Infront last month offered to guarantee the league media-rights income of €5.5bn ($7.5bn) over the six seasons from 2015 to 2021 to retain its Serie A partnership.

Infront’s current six-year deal as adviser is due to expire at the end of the 2015-16 season.

The agency proposed a new contract worth €900m per season for the 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 campaigns, rising to €930m for each of the 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.

Following a meeting on Monday, the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper said Juventus, Fiorentina, Roma, Internazionale, Sampdoria, Verona and Sassuolo proposed an alternative to the terms offered by Infront.

The clubs are said to have agreed in principle to extend Infront’s contract for the three seasons spanning 2015-16 to 2017-18, but not for the additional three campaigns through to the end of 2020-21.

The clubs are also said to be seeking that international rights are split into packages across geographical regions, rather than a single global package.

The league is set to make a formal decision over the new contract at a meeting on November 15.

“We believe it is right to go ahead with the adviser Infront, which we believe has done a great job in recent years,” Sampdoria chief executive Rinaldo Sagramola said, according to La Repubblica.