Serie A restarts, Dazn and Sky strike back against piracy
The two audiovisual rights holders are pushing anti-counterfeiting actions in the hope of bringing more subscribers on board in a subscriber base that is failing to grow. League launches #Stopiracy campaign
4' min read
4' min read
Serie A gets going again, but the longest and most difficult championship is played off the pitch. No sweaty shirts or balls to chase. There are servers, video streams, illegal platforms. And there are millions of Italians - almost 40% of adults according to the latest Fapav-Ipsos survey - who in 2024 chose to watch sports, films and TV series without paying. A phenomenon that in Italy is worth 295 million acts of piracy and a hole estimated at 2.2 billion for the national economy. Piracy of live sporting events has led to around 12 million lost enjoyments, with an estimated damage of around 350 million in 2024 (+23%). In particular, for Serie A, the League imagines an annual damage in excess of 300 million.
Here is the one that Dazn and Sky have in their sights as enemy number one. After all, the accounts are languishing and the subscriber base has been stagnant for years for the two pivots of football on TV (overall over 3.5 million, although subscriptions are more considering that many viewers are customers of both Dazn and Sky). Dazn has, among other assets, the entire Serie A, as well as Serie B and the rights to other foreign leagues, including the Spanish La Liga. There are instead three Serie A matches per week in co-exclusivity for Sky, which also counts among the arrows in its bow - always dwelling only on football - Premier League, Ligue 1, Bundesliga and the three European competitions (Champions League, Europa League and Conference League).
Within this framework, the fight against piracy responds to a clear industrial strategy: to turn pirates into regular customers, to bring back in millions of viewers who today stay outside the fence.
It is no coincidence that the Lega Serie A just yesterday relaunched its '#Stopiracy - Piracy Kills Football' campaign. In the stadiums of Serie A, and from this year also of B and C, spots and graphics will run during the first two days to remind of a simple concept: watching a match illegally is not a venial sin, but a crime. The law affects both those who offer content illegally and those who enjoy it. Extremely severe penalties are envisaged: up to three years' imprisonment for those who transmit pirated sports content and fines of 154 to 5,000 euro for end users. In May 2025 alone, the Guardia di Finanza, in cooperation with Lega Serie A and Agcom, reported the identification and sanctioning of 2,266 users across the country, in 80 provinces.
A key element in the fight against piracy came with Piracy Shield, the operating system capable of blocking illegal sites within minutes. In its first 16 months of operation, it blocked more than 55,000 web resources. Piracy Shield has been operational since 1 February 2024. The first Serie A league to be fully covered from the start of the season was therefore the 2024/25 Serie A, while the 2023/24 season has only been protected since February 2024. As of 1 August 2025, the scope also extended to first releases of films, TV series and live music, in addition to sport.
