Goodbye free-to-air Champions League matches for Italian clubs, Sky Italia armour-plates European football
Sky Italia secures exclusive TV rights to European football competitions, excluding free-to-air broadcasting of Italian clubs' matches
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Key points
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Sky Italia closes ranks on the television rights of the Champions, Europe and Conference League. The three continental competitions will not be shared with other broadcasters. In addition, the Italian matches will only be broadcast on the Sky platform or on Now. None of the matches involving Italian teams in the new Champions League will therefore be broadcast free-to-air, not even on Tv8, the flagship network of Comcast's media company.
No agreements with other groups
.According to Sole 24 Ore, the decision has reportedly been made. No sub-licences and agreements with other broadcasters on European football, then, for a Sky that evidently intends to play all its cards to the full in favour of its subscribers and to increase its revenues.
All this blinding the rights it acquired for 2024-27 exclusively. The latter was impossible for the three-year period that has just ended and which, at the time of the assignment, had been conditioned by the decision of the Italian Antitrust Authority, which had imposed a three-year preventive block on Sky in the acquisition of web exclusivity, following the purchase, which in fact did not even take place, of the R2 technology platform used by the then Mediaset Premium for its broadcasts.
Without this ban, Sky has set its sights firmly on the European cups. No official figures have ever been given, but rumours circulated in 2023, the year of allocation, indicated an outlay of around 660 million euros for the TV rights to the Champions League (185 out of 203 matches per season), Europa League and Conference League for the next three-year cycle from 2024 to 2027.
The new Champions formula
.An important commitment, but also consequent to the fact that from the 2024-2025 season the new Champions League formula will start: it will be played 11 months out of 12 and the matches will be a total of 47% more than in previous editions, with the number of teams participating in the final phase rising from 32 to 36, all in a single group. There will be eight Italian teams in Europe: five in the Champions League (Inter; Milan; Juventus; Atalanta and Bologna); two in the Europa League (Roma and Lazio) and one in the Conference (Fiorentina).
