Serie A clubs to vote on media rights business bid on November 19

Clubs in Italy’s top flight football division Serie A are set to meet this week to decide on the sale of a stake in its media rights business.

The league had previously announced the launch of a new company to manage its broadcast rights for a decade. As a part of this launch, a stake would be sold to a group of third-party interests in order to raise funds.

In mid-October a consortium led by CVC Capital was announced to have won the 10% stake with an offer of €1.65 billion and was granted an exclusive four-week period in which to negotiate terms of the deal. This exclusivity window ended on November 13, with the parties reportedly trying to reach an agreement by the end of the year.

A formal vote was initially set for November 18, but Reuters cites sources who claim that a decision had been delayed by a day to November 19.

A source told the newswire that “there are still some details to fine tune so the meeting is going to be postponed to Thursday,” while a second said that a deal would include a six year lock-up period.

Ultimately, the league will look to launch this media business in order to protect the league from the revenue impact of the Covid-19 pandemic while also looking to expand the rights valuation.

While being one of Europe’s top five leagues, Serie A is significantly behind the likes of the English Premier League and German Bundesliga in terms of broadcast revenues. In its most recent deal, set to expire in 2021, Serie A generated €1.35 per season in broadcast sales while the English league made €3.5 billion – more than 2.5 times the total.