Serie A Continue North America TV Deal With Paramount/CBS Sports

Lega Serie A has assigned the North American TV rights to Paramount+/CBS Sports for the next two seasons, in an extension of their current deal.

Paramount/CBS has shown coverage of Serie A since taking over from ESPN in the summer of 2021, initially winning a three-year contract to air the Italian top flight in both the US and Canada. The original deal also included live rights to the Coppa Italia and the Italian SuperCup and in total was valued at around $195 million for the three-year cycle. This was an increase on the deal with ESPN.

With nine of the 20 clubs in Serie A — Milan, Inter, Parma, Fiorentina, Roma, Bologna, Atalanta, Venezia and Genoa — now owned by North Americans, the pressure was on the league to secure a new TV rights deal ahead of the 2024/25 season. It’s unknown at this stage whether the new two-year extension will see Paramount/CBS Sport pay more than the previous deal, or whether it’s a continuation of the prior figures.

In the UK, TNT Sport, who have been covering the league since 2021, have retained the rights to show Serie A in England and Ireland, but not exclusively. It’s unknown how much TNT Sport, who took over the rights to air Serie A after telecommunications giant BT left the sports media industry in 2023, have paid to retain the rights as of writing, nor how long the new deal will last.

Towards the end of last season, terrestrial broadcaster ITV showed one game per-weekend on their streaming service ITVX, and it’s unknown at this stage whether a similar type of deal will continue into the new season.

The US deal, broadcast by streaming service Paramount +, will air some 400 matches in total: 380 league matches across the season, in addition to 25 Coppa Italia games and all Italian SuperCup games. Select matches will also be broadcast on the CBS Sports network and CBS Golazo network. The Network is available on connected TV and mobile devices through Paramount+, the CBS Sports App and Pluto TV, on CBSSports.com, and as a channel on The Roku Channel, Amazon FreeVee, Local Now and Plex.

This deal is only for the rights to the English language in the US, with the rights containing Spanish language are yet to be assigned.

Paramount+/CBS have made big investment in Italian football in recent years. Paramount sponsored Inter ahead of the 2023 Champions League final in Istanbul and continued sponsoring the Nerazzurri last season as they won their 20th Scudetto. The deal ended this summer, but Paramount also sponsored Atalanta for their successful Europa League final win against Bayer Leverkusen in Dublin in May. However this was only believed to be a one-time deal.

Aside from North America and the MENA region, Serie A sold its international rights to Infront agency for the 2021-24 cycle, which then sold packages to countries and region around the world. It remains to be seen if this deal will be continued in the next cycle.

Serie A has, in a bid to catch up with the Premier League and La Liga, opened foreign offices in London, Abu Dhabi and New York. Foreign rights for the last cycle brought in around $658m over three years. However, this pales in comparison to the Premier League’s foriegn rights, which saw England’s top flight bring in a colossal $6.5bn.