Lega Serie A, Italian club soccer’s governing body, has once again awarded domestic broadcast rights to the men’s Coppa Italia knockout competition and annual Supercoppa match to commercial broadcaster Mediaset, covering the 2024-27 cycle.
Italian reports place the value of the new deal at €56 million per season for Coppa Italia rights.
The announcement ends a months-long process to award rights to the competitions between 2024-25 and 2026-27, with an initial deadline for offers for July 13.
Most recently, Lega Serie A held private negotiations with Mediaset and public-service broadcaster Rai over their proposals after initially rejecting their opening bids back in July.
At the time, Serie A said it was attempting to secure at least €55 million annually from the sale of these rights.
Mediaset already holds rights in the country to the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa, the annual clash between winners of Serie A and Coppa Italia, for the current 2021-24 cycle in a €48.2 million ($57.1 million) per season deal.
It won the rights off Rai, which held the rights for the previous 2018-21 cycle for €34.5 million per season. Lega Serie A then expanded the format for the Coppa Italia ahead of the 2021-22 season to include 40 teams competing in the Serie A and second-tier Serie B, as well as four clubs from third-tier Serie C.
Lega Serie A has a deal in place to stage the Supercoppa in Saudi Arabia for the next six seasons, with the tournament set to expand to four teams for the 2023-24 season.
This year’s Supercoppa on January 18 marked a return of the tournament to the kingdom after being staged on home soil for the past two seasons despite Serie A’s initial €21-million ($24.4-million) agreement with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Sports to stage three editions of the contest in the country over five years.
The league has already staged two editions of the Supercoppa in Saudi in 2019. The first game was played in Jeddah in January 2019, with the second in Riyad at the end of that year. The 2020 edition was held in Italy due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Last year’s 2021 edition was staged in Milan at Inter’s iconic San Siro stadium after a late switch. At the time, it was reported the Saudi authorities failed to meet a specified deadline to exercise their option to host the match. To compensate, the Lega Serie A said it would compensate by staging the match in Saudi Arabia for this year’s 2022 edition.
In June, it was reported authorities in Saudi Arabia had made a bid of €23 million ($24 million) per season to host the next five editions of the Supercoppa, from 2023-24 to 2027-28.
Last week, meanwhile, the league’s member clubs voted to accept a domestic Serie A media rights offer for the next five seasons from current partners Sky Italia (pay-TV) and DAZN (streaming).
The bids from the incumbent rights-holders through to 2029 are worth at least €4.5 billion ($4.8 billion) in total, equating to €900 million per season. This is a small drop from the current fees paid by Sky and DAZN, however, which come to €930 million annually.
DAZN is set to pay €700 million yearly to cover every fixture during the five seasons, while Sky will contribute €200 million annually to co-broadcast three weekly games (alongside DAZN) out of the 10. In total, 266 games out of 380 each year will only be available with a DAZN subscription.
Serie A’s overseas rights sales process is also taking place currently, having got underway in August.
That process has initially begun with a tender having been issued for rights across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
