When DAZN confirmed in July 2025 that it had secured exclusive UK and Ireland broadcast rights to Serie A starting the 2025/26 season, the deal marked something Italian football had not achieved in years: a genuine live presence on British screens.
It was DAZN’s first major European football property available live to fans in the UK, covering up to eight matches per round, two of them non-exclusive, with more than 300 matches broadcast live across the season in full. For a league that has spent the past decade trying to convince global audiences it still belongs in the conversation with the Premier League and LaLiga, the UK arrival is a symbolic milestone as much as a commercial one.
The Domestic Backbone
None of that international ambition would matter without a stable financial base at home, and Serie A’s current media rights cycle, running from 2024 through 2029, provides exactly that. The deal, secured with incumbent partners DAZN and Sky Italia, is worth a minimum of €4.5 billion over five seasons, an average of €900 million per season.
DAZN has emerged as the dominant partner within that structure, reportedly paying €700 million per season for rights to all ten weekly Serie A fixtures, seven of them exclusive and three shared with Sky. That level of domestic investment signals real confidence in the product from broadcasters who are betting on continued audience growth rather than managing decline.
Expansion Beyond Italy’s Borders
The international push has extended well past the UK. In the United States, DAZN added Spanish-language coverage aimed at Latino audiences, with five matches per round exclusive and five non-exclusive. Meanwhile, CBS and Paramount+ extended their English-language US broadcast agreement with Serie A in June 2026 through the 2026-27 season, covering 420 total Italian club matches across Serie A, Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana.
Commercial interest has followed the broadcast footprint too, with international operators like NetBet now offering extensive football betting markets which include many options for wagering on Serie A, reflecting how far the league’s overseas commercial reach has grown compared to a decade ago.
The viewership numbers back up the sense of momentum. First-half data from the 2025/26 season showed Sky and DAZN combining for nearly 140 million total viewers across 190 matches in the first 19 rounds, an increase of more than 13 percent compared to the equivalent point in the previous season. For a league that spent much of the 2010s watching its television numbers stagnate, that kind of year-on-year growth is difficult to dismiss.
The Gap That Growth Hasn’t Closed
Still, the honest picture is more complicated than the headline numbers suggest.
Serie A’s overseas media rights division currently generates approximately €250 million in annual revenue, a figure that remains significantly lower than the international earnings posted by the Premier League and LaLiga. For scale, the Premier League’s international rights are projected to generate £2.17 billion per season in its next cycle, with broadcasts reaching 188 countries and a cumulative television audience of 3.2 billion.
Against that backdrop, Serie A’s overseas growth looks meaningful in percentage terms but modest in absolute revenue.
Part of the problem lies outside Italy’s control. An expanded UEFA Champions League format has intensified competition for global broadcast slots and viewer attention, while the Premier League’s continued dominance of the football media market makes it harder for any rival league to claim a larger share of international rights spending. Serie A’s response has been structural rather than cosmetic: the league has appointed JPMorgan Chase to evaluate strategic options for its international media rights business, including the possibility of a private equity stake, in an effort to close the gap with its rivals rather than simply hope organic growth gets it there.
Betting on America
Nowhere is Serie A’s long-term strategy clearer than in its approach to the US market. Even as the CBS/Paramount+ deal continues through 2026-27, its reported value, described as “in the low eight figures” annually, represents a steep decline from the $75 million per year CBS paid under its original 2021 agreement.
Rather than treat that as a permanent ceiling, Serie A intends to take its US broadcast rights back to the open market once the current deal expires, betting that World Cup-fueled American interest in the sport, combined with the presence of US internationals Christian Pulisic at AC Milan and Weston McKennie at Juventus, will produce a stronger valuation next time around.
Whether that bet pays off will say a great deal about how far Serie A’s global rebuild has actually progressed. The league has clearly reestablished itself as a live product worth watching in new markets. Turning that visibility into revenue that rivals the Premier League and LaLiga remains the unfinished part of the story.
