The row relates to the €240 million ($348 million) per season of television rights income which has to be shared according to the size of each club’s supporter base. Two weeks ago, the clubs agreed to ask 12 research companies to put forward a methodology and set of criteria on which to divide the money. Late last week, the 15 small and medium-sized clubs voted for three companies – Crespi, Doxa and Sport+Markt – to conduct the research. The big five voted against. Late on Friday the big clubs were looking into the legal merits of a challenge to the vote.
The problem of the big clubs is not so much the identity of the companies chosen but the parameters which they have been told to work to. The big clubs say that the parameters – which have not been made public – favour the smaller clubs unduly, with a very broad and elastic definition of a fan. The big clubs favoured a system which placed more emphasis on ratings for live coverage on the country’s pay-television platforms.
Adriano Galliani, vice president of Milan, described the vote as “an expropriation” of the big clubs’ revenues. League chief executive Maurizio Beretta said that the league had to work towards a solution that took into account the wishes of the majority but also adequately rewarded the handful of big clubs which generated the bulk of the television rights income.