Following authorization from Italian regulatory agency AGCOM, Italian soccer’s second-tier Serie B will launch a channel to stream its matches on retail giant Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.
Serie B had wanted to launch the service, known as LaB Channel, through Amazon’s Prime Video Channels at the start of the season on August 16, but the league ran into technical and regulatory issues with AGCOM that postponed the launch by two months.
Go deeper with GlobalData
However, Serie B president Mauro Balata has now said: "The news today is that Lega B has signed an agreement with Prime Video. We are defining the technical details [and] have defined all the legal and negotiation aspects."
The Amazon deal is in addition to the league’s three season domestic agreement with sports streaming service DAZN Italia.
That tie-up, which was announced in August, covers the 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 campaigns.
It came only a few days after the league’s organizers were forced to re-issue a domestic rights tender for the competition after previous tenders proved unsuccessful.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataFrom the beginning of the 2021-22 season through the end of the 2023-24 campaign, Serie B was broadcast by a mix of pay-TV operator Sky Italia, and now-defunct streaming service Helbiz.
On August 7, Serie B held a meeting of its 20 constituent clubs, with the members unanimously deciding to re-tender the rights, asking for a lower price (reportedly around $14.2 million per year), a far cry from the reported $30 million per season it was receiving from DAZN and Sky in the final year of the previous deal.
One option that was initially considered by Serie B was the creation of an in-house channel and/or streaming service to house the rights, as a direct-to-consumer service was at one point seen as the only realistic option.
