Serie A: TV rights awarded to the Spanish intermediary Mediapro for €1.05bn per year for 2018-2021

Serie A: TV rights awarded to the Spanish intermediary Mediapro for €1.05bn per year for 2018-2021
	Reg, Media - Paris - Monday, February 5 2018 - News #112261
	The Lega Serie A has awarded the domestic audiovisual rights of the Serie A for the 2018-2021 period to an independent intermediary, the Spanish audiovisual group Mediapro, for €1,050,001,000 per year, announced the Italian League on 05/02/2018. "With this price being higher than the minimum amount required by the tender (€1,000 above the €1.05bn floor price), the Lega Serie A will now proceed to the Italian Competition and Market Authority (which has 45 days to respond), in order to officially grant the rights in question," said the Italian League.  The Lega Serie A had not awarded any of the five lots proposed on 06/01/2018 (see details below), for the domestic audiovisual rights to the Serie A for the 2018-2021 period, following private negotiations between operators and the Italian League, from 22 to 26/01/2018. The Lega Serie A received an offer of €630m from Sky Italia for four lots (A, C, D1, and D2) and an offer of €200m from Mediaset for lot B, for a total of €830m. The Lega Serie A had also received an offer, reserved for "independent intermediaries", of €950m from Mediapro for all of the lots. Mediapro proposed to create a television channel of the Italian League, which would then sell its programming to different operators. In the event of revenues of more than €1.1bn per year, Mediapro will pay half of this additional revenue to the League. The 20 clubs of Serie A had until 05/02/2018 to decide if they would accept the Mediapro offer, or if they should relaunch the tenders.  The Lega Serie A had issued two separate tenders regarding the allocation of its domestic audiovisual rights over the 2018-2021 period, on Saturday 06/01/2018. The first corresponded to the five lots put back into play by the Lega Serie A, and the second was an offer for an independent intermediary for all Serie A TIM matches, which comes into play if the first call for tender fails.
	2018-2021 Serie A: Sky Italia disputes the awarding of TV rights to Mediapro Serie A TIM (San Siro Stadium, Milan) © Sky Italia Sky Italia, the current co-holder of the domestic TV rights to the Serie A TIM (2015-2018) asked the Lega Serie A not to award the 2018-2021 TV rights to Mediapro, because the Spanish audiovisual group, although it has submitted an offer as an independent intermediary, should be considered a telecommunications operator, according to Italian media on 05/02/2018.  Sky is rumoured to have made a similar "intermediary" offer that was rejected.  Sky asked the league to declare the offer submitted by Mediapro "at 09:36" on 05/02/2018 as "unacceptable", to interrupt the private dealings with the Spanish group and to exclude it immediately from the procedure of assignment.  Giovanni Malagò, president of the CONI, and appointed commissioner of the Lega Serie A on 01/02/2018, is in South Korea where the PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games will begin on the 09/02/2018.  He remains in contact with Paolo Nicoletti, the new vice commissioner of the Italian League in charge of the rules and regulations sector.