ALVISE CAGNAZZO: Italian football “will die” after Serie A agreed a new TV rights deal until 2029, Napoli boss claims – after plans to create its own Serie A channel fell through

DAZN and Sky will retain the rights to broadcast live Serie A games in Italy for the next five seasons after Italian clubs voted in favor of the proposal.

The league meeting ended with 17 votes in favor, one abstention and two against. Afterwards, Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis bluntly expressed his fears that Italian football could become less competitive compared to its European counterparts.

His words, reported by the Gazzetta dello Sport, were very critical. He said: “It’s a defeat for Italian football, with this offer football will die.” For me, the fan is the absolute capital of a football club.

“My relationship has to be direct with the fans, not directly with Sky and DAZN.” The value of Italian football is based on investment. “Sky and DAZN are not investing.”

Over the past three years, Serie A has generated around €927.5m (£809m) per season from selling its TV rights in Italy, with DAZN once again holding a majority stake.

DAZN and Sky retain the rights to broadcast Serie A games in Italy for the next five seasons

Although 17 clubs voted in favor of the deal, some concerns were raised

However, the new contract runs for five years and is likely to curb any financial growth in the Italian top flight.

With the new agreement, Lega Serie A will receive around 900 million euros (785 million pounds) per season.

DAZN will continue to broadcast all ten championship games in a game week, seven of them exclusively and the last three from Sky in co-exclusivity with DAZN.

The idea for a television series was a flop

If the clubs had not accepted the downward proposal from DAZN and Sky, the six envelopes would have had to be opened with proposals to create a single Lega Serie A channel, which would then be resold in bulk to the individual broadcasters.

This is because six different partners – Carlyle, Pif, Advent, Oaktree and two other secret platforms – had agreed to present an offer on this front, but, as Enrico Mentana claimed in the Open newspaper, the idea was not was attractive and most likely only served to increase the final price.

Six companies offered to help create a single Series A channel with the intention of increasing sales

DE LAURENTIIS IS FEARED ABOUT THE COMPETITIVENESS OF SERIES A IN THE MARKET

According to Napoli boss De Laurentiis, too few fear that the financial decline of Serie A could significantly weaken the economic power of the league’s clubs and thus widen the gap between Serie A and the Premier League.

Additional payments from DAZN are expected over the five-year period from 2024, but for De Laurentiis these will not be enough to cover the club’s growth margin in the market.

Data from the latest transfer market session suggests a collapse in investment among Serie A clubs and an increase in sales of top players abroad.

Serie A will only buy if it receives money from the Premier League or Ligue 1. The player market in Italy is a closed system that rarely attracts investment from other parts of Europe.

Saudi Pro League teams spent a whopping €854.6m (£785m) signing Sergei Milinkovic-Savic – the Italian championship’s best midfielder – from Serie A.

On a global level, Serie A has been overtaken by the Premier League, Ligue 1 and Saudi Pro League, which have invested heavily in bringing Marcelo Brozovic and many other top players from the European scene to Saudi Arabia.

As Italian financial media report, the Premier League invested 2.8 billion euros (2.4 billion pounds), Serie A 854.6 million euros (785 million pounds) and the German Bundesliga 747 million euros (651 million pounds) in 2023. .

Spain’s La Liga is far behind in sixth place with investment of €439m (£382m).

Napoli boss Aurelio De Laurentiis has expressed concern over the finances of the deal

JUVENTUS, INTER, AC MILAN AND NAPOLI SPEND LESS THAN A LOW LEVEL ENGLISH TEAM

In the 2023 summer transfer window, Juventus’ only purchase came in the form of Timothy Weah from Lille for €12m (£10m).

Inter have brought in Matteo Darmian, Hakan Çalhanoğlu, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Marcus Thuram on free transfers in recent years, while AC Milan had to sell Sandro Tonali for €60m (£52m) to strengthen.

Similarly, Napoli opted to sacrifice Kim Min-Jae to Bayern Munich before bringing in Natan and Jesper Lindstrøm. It served as confirmation that even a club capable of winning the Scudetto needs to keep its spending in check.

TV revenue accounts for around 80 percent of the clubs’ fixed income per season and without increases, investment in the transfer market will not increase.

Without high fixed income from TV contracts and without stadiums of their own, it is difficult for Serie A clubs to remain competitive with the rest of Europe.

Amazingly, middle and lower teams in England have spent more than Juventus in recent years and somehow have better economic capabilities compared to all Italian teams.

Everton, for example, bought Beto from Udinese for £25 million – a fee that was too expensive for many Italian clubs. The result is the departure of another player who was highly regarded in Serie A but has yet to establish himself in the Premier League.

Everton have completed the signing of Portuguese striker Beto in a £25million deal from Udinese