Italy’s top-tier Serie A football clubs will meet on Friday to discuss the issue of how to maintain the value of the league’s domestic broadcast rights and increase revenue from overseas rights.
The 20 clubs of Serie A will meet the league’s main domestic broadcasters, pay-television broadcaster Sky Italia and commercial broadcaster Mediaset, along with the MP & Silva agency, which sells the league’s international rights.
A Lega Serie A meeting was held on Friday in the wake of reports that the IMG agency had expressed an interest in becoming the league’s new media-rights sales adviser.
Serie A’s current adviser is the Infront Sports & Media agency and its deal is due to run until the end of the 2015-16 season.
Seven Serie A clubs have complained that the agency had been paid an excessive commission for selling the media rights for the 2012-13 to 2014-15 period. Fiorentina, Internazionale, Juventus, Roma, Sampdoria, Sassuolo and Verona have called for Infront’s deal to be curtailed a year early and for a new tender process to appoint an adviser for the 2015-16 to 2017-18 seasons.
Although Infront’s status was not directly addressed at Friday’s meeting, the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper said that this week’s gathering would be held with a view to discussing new marketing strategies for the three years spanning 2015-16 to 2017-18.
Lega Serie A president Maurizio Beretta said on Friday: “Next week we plan a meeting… to confront the evolution of the market of the rights and possible future of this sector. Our championship, with proceeds of approximately €1bn ($1.32bn) per year, is the second championship in Europe, ahead of Spain, Germany and France. We must build on this consolidated figure.”