Eleven secures Serie A football streaming rights for Italy

Eleven Sports has secured live rights to Serie A football in Italy and will air three games live every match week on its Sportube streaming service during this season.

Eleven has secured rights to show three live game each match week on mobile, tablet and online, starting with the Napoli-Cagliari, Benevento-Inter and Milan-Roma matches.

According to Eleven, its line-up of live games will typically include the 18:00 Saturday match and the games at 12:30 and 15:00 on a Sunday.

Eleven has announced an aggressive pricing plan for its coverage, with individual game being available for €1.99, or all three games in a given week being available for €3.99.

Contacted by DTVE, Eleven said that the rights were for online and mobile distribution, and covered all the teams in Serie A. It declined to disclose the duration of the deal.

Eleven acquired Italian OTT TV sports service Sportube in May. The service already produces and airs Serie C games via a dedicated online platform. During the 2016/17 season, Sportube produced and distributed 1,287 Serie C games. Coverage of these matches had in most cases only been available locally previously.

“Our model of acquiring smaller rights with economically viable production costs and widespread appeal amongst domestic fans in Italy has proved very successful and we are thrilled to take our coverage of football to the next level by delivering top Serie A action for the fans.” said Danny Menken, Group Managing Director, Eleven Sports.

“We are looking forward to working in partnership with Serie A to help them reach and grow their fan-base across Italy by providing access to the biggest and best teams and players at an affordable price.”

The acquisition of top-tier football rights marks a significant upping of Eleven’s investment in Italy, following its acquisition of the streaming platform in May, which made Italy the company’s seventh international market.

Sportube had 4.3 million unique visitors during the 2015-16 season, up from 3.5 million during the 2014-15 season. In August 2016, Sportube introduced a pay-per-view system as part of its monetisation strategy and to enable it to improve its services for fans across Italy.

Sky Italia currently holds the TV rights to all live Serie A matches until 2018, with Mediaset Premium holding the rights to show the matches of Juventus, Milan, Internazionale, Roma, Napoli, Fiorentina, Lazio and Genoa live. RAI holds the rights to highlight packages.

The Lega Calcio said in June that it would rerun the auction for the 2018-21 rights after Mediaset and TIM declined to participate in its initial attempt to auction the rights for the next three seasons. Perform Group, operator of the DAZN online sports service in Germany, was widely reported to have submitted the only bid for the online rights for the 2018-21 seasons, but with a bid that was about half the amount being sought by the Lega.