TV channel threatens to delay Italian football season

net1

Italian football may be delayed for the second season in a row because the league's new satellite channel may not be ready to broadcast in time.

Last season multimillion-pound players from Juventus, AC Milan and Lazio were left kicking their heels because of wrangling over how much each club would earn from TV rights.

A similar delay would not only be disappointing for fans but would damage the launch of Rupert Murdoch's Sky Italia venture, formed after the mogul bought Italian broadcaster Telepiu for £700m earlier this year.

Last year smaller clubs were concerned their larger Serie A counterparts were making too much money from the deal and threatened to boycott the start of the season.

This time around the clubs are agreed on the deal but league officials fear the channel will not be ready in time.

"We've got to link up to the new platform and we've got to start the publicity," the Football League vice-chairman, Antonio Matarrese, told Gazzetta dello Sport.

"We could have to delay the start of the season again."

The move would hit Mr Murdoch's marketing plans for Sky Italia, which has 2.2 million subscribers.

He hopes to make the service profitable within two years, boosting subscriber levels by running the mix of football, movies and 24-hour news pioneered by BSkyB.

The league hoped its Gioco Calcio (Football Game) channel, formed earlier this year after the European commission ruled News Corporation's Sky Italia could not monopolise the market, would help prevent any further delays.

Under a deal struck earlier this year, Gioco Calcio is set to broadcast second-tier Serie A as well as Serie B games via a Sky platform and decoder box, meaning the two groups will each take a cut of the market.

Sky Italia will broadcast the leading matches featuring top teams like Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Roma and Lazio.

The latest problems will act as a warning sign for the English Premier League, which has long threatened to set up its own channel if the bids it receives for rights, tendered earlier this month, fail to match expectations.

Analysts are keeping an eye on Sky Italia to measure its impact on Italy's biggest private broadcaster, Mediaset, which is controlled by the family of the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.