After a quick aperitivo, nearly 30,000 fans will pass through the archway at the Stadio Ennio Tardini, no doubt the strains of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida reverberating around the old ground, as they take their seats for newly promoted Parma’s game against AC Milan on Saturday.
In the United States, the action could theoretically reach 125million people as it becomes the first Serie A game to be shown on national television. Kicking off at 12:30pm ET on CBS, the league is hopeful it will break the previous record audience for a broadcast in this market, standing as it does at only 225,000 viewers.
If the game between the two American-owned clubs performs well — let’s say USMNT star Christian Pulisic scores a backheel like the one Jeremy Menez netted in a mind-bending nine-goal thriller in this fixture in 2015 — then there is scope for more. Four were talked about when CBS Sports and Serie A agreed a new two-year deal in July.
🗣️ FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER A SERIE A MATCH WILL BE AIRED ON CBS 🚨
The crew will be LIVE on site for Parma vs. Milan on August 24 🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/2N0TJuWaDP
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) August 14, 2024
The league has bounced around networks in the past, leaving fans scrabbling around Rai International, Dish Network, TNT, BeIN and ESPN. A renewal with the same partner ensures continuity and builds on a relationship that began in 2021 when Serie A finally and belatedly began to get serious about breaking the U.S.. Along with the Middle East and North Africa, the market was identified as key to Serie A’s growth. An office was opened in New York and the relationship between league and broadcaster was direct rather than through an intermediary, allowing for privileged access.
The hope was to draw 15million Italian-Americans into Serie A at a time when the league itself was becoming more and more American-influenced. This season, nine of the league’s 20 teams are North American-owned. They include four of Serie A’s five representatives in the revamped Champions League.
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Theoretically, this summer was as good a time as any for the league’s rights to come up, not just in the U.S. but in almost all global markets, with the exception of the Middle East and North Africa. Serie A has undergone a mini infrastructure-defying resurgence of late. Since 2020, its teams have reached eight UEFA finals. At a time when only Manchester City have won the Premier League, Serie A has had four different champions in five seasons.
Inter Milan, Napoli, AC Milan and Juventus have each won Serie A in the past five seasons (Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)
No wonder the league’s chief executive, Luigi De Siervo, bullishly set out the objective to increase the total revenue from international TV rights from €250million to €400m. It has been one of the principal lags between the league and its competitors for too long. For context, the Premier League makes around €400m a year from its U.S. deal alone. Catching La Liga has become more of a priority. A change in the law in Italy has also enabled Serie A to do TV deals with foreign broadcasters for as long as five years, allowing partners in other countries the time to invest in developing an audience. But the new arrangement with CBS is shorter and for less money than the last tender.
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On the one hand, the new two-year deal can be viewed as strategic. The rights will come up again in the year of the 2026 World Cup in the U.S., Mexico and Canada when the U.S. market should be more football-mad than ever. A better auction could be held as, for instance, other deals such as ESPN’s with the Bundesliga will expire at the same time.
On the other hand, the new deal with CBS is reflective of the current environment. The expanded Champions League has been a problem for Serie A (and other leagues) insofar as more games allow UEFA to charge broadcasters a higher price. This has eaten into TV networks’ budgets and diminished spending power on other competitions.
Then there’s the Tolkien-esque one-ring-to-rule-them-all nature of the U.S. landscape. Every sport has one pinnacle league; the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL. There can be only one and if it’s not MLS, which can at least call upon a bigger star than anyone in Serie A, namely Lionel Messi, then it’s the Premier League, which has also achieved that rare crossover into popular culture thanks to Ted Lasso. Even Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s investment in lower league Wrexham and the accompanying documentary have reinforced English football’s primacy.
AC Milan fans in Baltimore, Maryland, this August (Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)
This summer, Manchester United played Liverpool and Arsenal in the U.S.. Chelsea also played Man City. There was a Clasico at MetLife Stadium. The only Italian team state-side was AC Milan. The rest stayed in Europe. Juventus spent pre-season at Adidas’ headquarters in Germany and played a friendly in Sweden. Napoli trained in the Dolomites and Castel di Sangro. The furthest afield champions Inter Milan travelled was London after a change of ownership halted a mooted tour of China.
Exposure in the U.S. was minimal or Milan-centric, and it remains to be seen if De Siervo revisits plans for a mini Serie A tournament like the one he proposed, without success, during the World Cup in Qatar. A Summer Series like the one the Premier League organised in 2023 with Chelsea, Brentford, Fulham, Newcastle and Brighton would no doubt be welcomed.
But back to TV.
Owners like Atalanta’s majority shareholder, Steve Pagliuca, remain optimistic in the long-run. “What’s going on now,” he says, “is the streaming wars which were very beneficial and maybe inflated values as people tried to capture eyeballs. Different streaming companies paid a lot of money for these rights and now they’re cutting back. If you take the long-term view, I would predict that when the streaming wars are over, the technology is going to increase the amount of money that goes through television, the amount of viewers, and the amount of fans, which increases the revenue for all those teams.”
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In the meantime, it’s a case of riding it out and being creative. “I think the league is getting more sophisticated,” Pagliuca adds. In the UK and Ireland, where the incumbent rights holder TNT Sports was reducing its number of channels and couldn’t guarantee Serie A the same distribution and exposure, the league is testing a new model with OneFootball as their provider for a direct-to-consumer offering, whereby Serie A decides on the packaging and pricing. For the first three gameweeks, matches will be free, with the exception of the two retained in co-exclusivity with TNT.
From 2023: the Paramount+ team at Napoli v AC Milan (Andrea Staccioli/Insidefoto/LightRocket via Getty Images)
In high population but low-to-middle income markets like India, the content is free on Galaxy Racer, with gamification to be added in order to drive engagement. In the U.S., 424 games in Serie A, the Coppa Italia and the Supercoppa Italiana are back on Paramount+ with a reach in the 10s of millions. The Spanish language rights, which were warehoused in the last cycle, are now on Fox Deportes with a reach of 12million, and the radio station Sirius XM will have at least one game per matchday with a reach of 33m.
Whether Serie A can meaningfully cut through remains to be seen. Perhaps it would have been better, for instance, to pick a game at the league’s most iconic ground, San Siro, for its debut on national U.S. TV.
But all in all, the staging will be a secondary concern as long as it’s a great game and a compelling advert for Serie A. Over to you Pulisic and co.
(Top photo: Getty Images)