Italian league votes to cancel Mediapro Serie A award

Italy’s football league has agreed to annul its award of Serie A rights to Spanish broadcaster Mediapro after it said the latter had failed to provide necessary guarantees.

According to Spanish financial daily El Español, Mediapro now has seven days to commit to a €1.2 billion guarantee to avoid the contract being cancelled definitively.

According to the paper, the Italian league has made a series of unprecedented requirements that Mediapro would be hard pressed to comply with.

The Catalan broadcaster acquired the rights to the next three seasons of Serie A football for €1.05 billion per season three months ago, but the deal has been blocked by an Italian court after pay TV operator Sky objected.

Sky claimed that Mediapro had bid in a process reserved for independent intermediaries, but that it was a broadcaster rather than an intermediary, and lacked the capacity to distribute the competition in the Italian market.

According to Italian press reports, league deputy commissioner Paolo Nicoletti said at the Serie A league’s assembly that the award to Mediapro was conditional on it being able to market TV rights and create a channel, an outcome with that was highly uncertain.

According to the reports, the most likely outcome of the decision is that the league will now put the rights back on the market, with Sky the most likely winner.