Italian soccer deal casts shadow on DTT model

摘要

The two pay-television services on Italy's digital-terrestrial platform are set to fight for rights to the country's top football division after its clubs last week decided to move to collective selling. Lega Calcio, the association of Italian football clubs, will sell the Serie A rights from the 2010 season onwards after 15 of the division's 20 clubs voted in favour of abandoning the current system. A key question is whether the change to collective selling will be accompanied by a move to sell exclusive rights to a single plat- form, which could create a bidding war that could benefit the clubs. Under current deals, which started in August and run until 2010, each club sold rights to home matches to either Mediaset's digital-terrestrial service Mediaset Premium or the rival Cartapiu La7 from Telecom Italia Media. In addition they signed separate deals with Sky Italia for live satellite rights. The digital-terrestrial matches are shown as pay-per-view, while Sky Italia also shows games on its Sky Sports premium channels.