Italian soccer’s top-tier Serie A has finally secured a broadcast rights partner in the US for the next cycle, through a renewal (for exclusive rights) with CBS Sports.
That deal runs through the 2024-25 and 2025-26 Serie A campaigns and also covers action from the Coppa Italia knockout competition.
Securing a US broadcast partner had been one of the major overseas rights issues outstanding for the upcoming 2024-25 Serie A campaign, which will begin on August 17 (although it is understood this particular agreement was always likely to be concluded across the summer break).
The first match covered by the new deal will see Genoa take on last season’s champions Inter Milan on that date.
The Paramount+ streaming service (owned by Paramount alongside CBS) will cover all 380 Serie A games per season, and at least 25 games annually from the Coppa Italia and all action from the Supercoppa Italiana annual fixture each year.
Select matches, meanwhile, will air on the CBS Sports Network and CBS Sports Golazo Network.
The original CBS-Serie A tie-up began in 2021-22 when the broadcaster and the league struck a three-season deal reported by GlobalData Sport as worth $227.1 million in total. Before that, heavyweight sports broadcaster ESPN held rights.
This extension comes with the Italian league home to several stars from the US national team, including Christian Pulisic at AC Milan, and both Timothy Weah and Weston McKennie at Juventus.
It also amounts to the second European soccer deal CBS has unveiled in recent days after securing multi-platform rights to the English Football League (EFL) through 2027-28.
CBS, through its deal with the EFL (the organizer of the second, third, and fourth tiers of the country’s soccer league pyramid) will broadcast a minimum of 250 EFL matches per season across the Championship, League One, League Two, Carabao Cup, and Bristol Street Motors Trophy.
CBS Sports’ soccer portfolio also includes Europe's UEFA Champions League, Europa League, Conference League, and Youth League, NWSL, the United Soccer League, Concacaf national team competitions, Argentina’s Liga Profesional de Fútbol, the Scottish Professional Football League, and the AFC Champions League.
Serie A’s international rights tenders, meanwhile, have been taking place since mid-2023, with the league having substantially changed its method for selling media rights across the next cycle.
Previously, the vast majority of rights were held by the Infront agency. Now, the league is carrying out a sizeable proportion of negotiations, in various markets, directly with broadcasters (although Infront is distributing rights across Asia-Pacific).
This process is being headed up by Anna Guarnerio, who joined the league in a senior media rights role in December after spending 25 years at Infront Italy.
In mid-June, a three-year deal was struck across the DACH countries (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) with global sports streaming service DAZN.
Domestically, the league will be covered by DAZN and pay-TV’s Sky Italia for the next five seasons.
With less than a month to go before the start of the new season, deals have yet to be signed off in markets including the UK, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America.
