Every week the new Italian tv channel of Lega Calcio, "Serie A TIM TV", offers three football matches in different schedules, at 18 on Saturdays, at 12,30 on Sundays and another one at 15 in the afternoon. It's a new pay-tv which charges 2 Euros per match or 3,99 for the 3 matches. All football teams are involved in such broadcasts and the shooting in studio is composed of a show dealing with pre and post match. Here technical details of the games are analyzed with present and past glories and guests. The Italian sponsor of the channel is the telco mobile operator TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile).
4th January 2016
We are witnessing the birth of a giant in the pay tv subscription landscape and Italian Serie A Lega Calcio is counting of the technical excellence of Italian production facility Infront. Both production and advertising collection is in the hands of this well known name.
The 3 matches of the top level championship are streamed on the internet, IPTV, and mobile, while the two other Italian pay-tv giants, Mediaset Premium and Sky, strive for "sports survival" in a difficult scenery. Lega Calcio in the mean time is using soccer as the killer application to gain new subscribers, to re-balance and re-place the huge amount of money involving this sport.
Mediaset Premium made consistent efforts to gain the Champions League tv rights trying to conquer subscribers. Sky is trying to stem a leak and call centers of both providers are working full time to win this battle. In such an aggressive scenery it seems there is no room for any other competitor, but despite this, Lega Calcio with Serie A TV has launched a new channel. The target audience is huge and the production team of Infront is extensive and very powerful. The idea behind is rather simple, why selling others golden and profitable sports rights, just for a share, when and external company may handle all the difficult tasks for you? So Lega Calcio has married a common trend for sports federations which is to create a proper own channel leaning on external production companies. And in this case it is the same external company which used to produce the same tv programs for other tv providers! So Lega Calcio and Serie A TIM TV has the power of 114 football matches, 3 per week, on Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoon. It is the so called E-Pack which involved 108 Million euros last year. The other actors, as mentioned, are Infront, which was recently absorbed by Chinese Wanda, holding the tv rights and Telecom Italia on a revenue sharing basis. TIM is essential and strategic for the distribution of contents on the net and mobile devices to be connected to tv sets.
Sport09 is the subsidiary of Infront dealing with advertising collection and sports specialized.
One of the aims of this new channel -besides making money (!!!)- is to involve young people in over the top pay-tv. So not a mere competition of traditional sat or DT tv channels, but addressing to a new public which hardly spends time in front of a tv set, the so called "Z Generation". So the new channel is full of multi media services, games, performance rates, social media direct connection, on line statistics, and most valuable player estimates.
So Lega Calcio is becoming himself an editor, deploying the same contents developed for external broadcasters since 2010.
Could this channel be a threaten to Mediaset and SKY? Hard to say, since the former holds rights for the 8 best teams, 248 football matches, the latter for 380 football matches of Serie A (132 exclusive).
15 million Italian home are potentially interested in soccer on tv. 5 millions are subscribers. 4 millions have tested pay-tv and not renewed; 6 have never tried any tv subscription service. Serie A TIM TV is trying to catch some of this sleeping target.
