Italy: DAZN scores Serie A rights
March 29, 2021
By Colin Mann
Sports streaming platform DAZN has acquired the rights to broadcast all of Serie A including seven out of 10 exclusive matches per match-week in Italy from 2021 to 2024 – and becomes the new primary broadcaster of the competition.
It is paying a reported €840 million a season for the deal, replacing Sky, which offered just €750 million a season to continue as the main broadcaster.
In what it describes as a “landmark” agreement, DAZN will show live and on demand coverage of every Serie A match, describing it as a win for football fans in Italy who will be able to watch them all on DAZN for the first time. DAZN will more than treble its existing coverage of the competition, which began in 2018 with the platform showing 114 matches per season.
For three seasons (2021-24), DAZN will broadcast 266 Serie A exclusive matches and 114 co-exclusive matches or seven out of 10 exclusive matches per match-week as well as three co-exclusive matches. The agreement is one of the largest sports streaming deals in history and is a seminal tipping point in the migration of sports consumption from linear pay TV to OTT.
“We are thrilled that Serie A has a new home on DAZN in Italy,” declared James Rushton, Co-CEO, DAZN Group. “This is a historic agreement that confirms DAZN as the leading sports destination in Italy and rewards fans with unbeatable coverage of Serie A. DAZN was founded with a vision for premium sports to be more accessible, and this agreement will deliver on that whilst continuing to drive innovation and improve the fan experience. With our business globally gaining considerable momentum, DAZN has made this strategic and disciplined investment to further accelerate growth in one of our core markets.”
Separately, DAZN and TIM, Telecom Italia’s OTT service, have signed a distribution agreement which, by extending the existing partnership, will bring the content of the streaming service on TIMVISION for the next three years.
DAZN will continue to distribute matches via the Internet and has chosen TIM as its strategic partner. This will make TIM the reference telecom and pay-TV operator offering DAZN content in Italy.
The new partnership will be active from July 2021 with dedicated DAZN service offers reserved for TIM customers including Serie A matches, which count on an audience of around 5 million households at present mainly via satellite.
According to DAZN, the partnership with TIM represents another step towards its growth and consolidation on the Italian market.
TIM will support migration from satellite to the streaming platform through its Ultrabroadband coverage available in Italy on the fixed network (over 90 per cent of active fixed lines can already access UBB), in addition to the mobile network, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and satellite WiFi, making it possible to offer all customers the best user experience.
Migration from satellite to a streaming platform will continue and strengthen the work done so far to combat piracy alongside other institutions: TIM and DAZN will work to adopt a series of measures to strengthen the fight against this phenomenon.