Ruling to Come on Serie A TV Rights

July 5, 2011

A ruling will be made today on the request of Serie A club Juventus for an injunction to block the distribution of around US$289.5m of media rights income among the 20 Serie A clubs.

According to TV Sports Markets, the deals have been struck against the wishes of the league’s top five clubs – Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Napoli and AS Roma. With the former calling for the “immediate suspension of the contracts with three research institutes that were agreed in an illegitimate manner” by 15 small and medium-sized Serie A clubs.

The league commissioned the research from Sport+Markt, Doxa and Crespi, however the complaint of the Turin club is that the criteria used is at odds with the definition of “supporter” in the 2008 Melandri law on collective selling. The big clubs say that only one club per supporter should be taken into account, but the smaller clubs have insisted that second preferences should also be considered.

Using the wider definition increases the share of the money which would go to the smaller clubs. Under the proposed criteria, the total media rights income for Juventus would fall to $109m for the 2010-11 season from $127.5m in 2009-10, when the rights were sold individually by each club.