Today the Senate Committee held hearings of some representatives of the main broadcasters working in the world of football in Italy as part of the “Prospects for the reform of Italian football” affair.
Roman RighettiExternal and public affairs director Europe of DAZNintervened by underlining the importance of TV: “About 3 billion of the value of the Serie A League is mainly derived from TV rights, with 10% destined for other leagues. For the 2024-2029 rights cycle we have presented an offer divided between 700 million euros and a revenue sharing mechanism: once a certain turnover threshold is exceeded for us, we divide the remaining amount by two with the league. It is a virtuous partnership that must however take into account the three variables for turnover: the football product, the price level and the number of subscribers. We are aiming for technological quality on the product, but it is clear that the better the access guaranteed to customer-fans relating to their team, the greater the willingness that they will purchase the product”.
Many are not satisfied with the prices.
“We are working on gradually increasing the price. In comparison with the main European leagues, not only England, but also Spain, Germany and France, these countries have subscriptions that are much higher in terms of cost than Italy. In the UK the average cost is 90 euros per month, in Greece even between 47 and 50 euros per month with a limited number of matches and only one access to streaming. We are also working to diversify the offer and the possibility of providing our service to customers. The number of customers we have is heavily influenced by piracy. Research by Fapav indicates that around 280 million euros per season are taken away from the legal viewing of the Serie A championship, with customers using illegal services around 2-3 million. A strong action on piracy would bring benefits to the treasury but also to the virtuous circle of Italian football, which would have more resources deriving from TV rights. The more effective the fight against piracy, the more resources a broadcaster like us can reserve for football. Italian. The anti-piracy law in this sense is a very important step forward, but we must acknowledge that pirates are very sophisticated and know how to circumvent the bans. On our part, we require a better functioning of the platform and to make it mandatory for technological communication intermediaries, mostly American companies, to register on the platform. This point is necessary to implement the functioning of the platform. Another hope is that the memorandum of understanding between AgCom and the Guardia di Finanza will be signed to prosecute users of pirate services. There are some activity profiles provided for by the penal code for undercover work, and if this were open to piracy it would be an excellent tool to use”.