MILAN: Sky plc, Europe’s dominant satellite pay TV operator, and sports media group Perform, have won the broadcast rights for Serie A in Italy until 2021.
While financial details were not revealed, the combined value of the media rights works out to €973 million ($1.2 billion) per season on average, Reuters reports.
Sky has secured exclusive rights to broadcast live 266 matches in Italy every season, or seven out of 10 Serie A games being played on a given day.
Perform Group has won the exclusive rights to broadcast 342 Serie A matches and highlights over the three seasons, across several platforms.
With the football rights in its kitty, Perform’s OTT sports streaming service DAZN will now kick off operations in Italy, also becoming the first live and on demand streaming service in the history of Serie A to broadcast the league.
All matches streamed by DAZN will be available on a wide range of devices, including smart TVs, PCs, smartphones, tablets and games consoles on a subscription of €9.99 ($11.81) per month. Fans will get a one-month free trial and can cancel or pause their subscription at any time.
James Rushton, CEO of DAZN, said: “The sport industry is ripe for disruption. Consumer behaviour has been transformed by technology, with streaming becoming the new norm for viewing content. DAZN suits the changing needs of today’s sports fans. Since launching almost two years ago, we have disrupted the industry in multiple markets as we change the way the world sees sport.
“DAZN is the world’s first pure sport OTT offer, which will do for sport what Netflix did for TV and what Spotify did for music. We are already the world’s largest sport broadcaster based on volume, streaming more than 100 million hours of content to fans each year. Our entry into Italy with Serie A rights is the first of many announcements we expect to make in the coming weeks as we reveal a range of premium domestic and international sports rights to create a multi-sport offering that is accessible, affordable and lives up to our fans first philosophy.”
DAZN has made its mark as a multi-sport live and on demand streaming service in countries such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Japan and Canada. With the addition of Italy, it plans to expand its operations further in the coming weeks.
The Serie A rights acquisition follows on from the recently announced $1 billion joint venture with boxing promoter Matchroom Boxing to create Matchroom Boxing USA, which will see the launch of DAZN in the US this summer.
