A change in the duration of audiovisual rights, increasing it from 3 to 5 years. But also an increasingly determined fight against piracy which, explains the CEO of the League, Luigi De Siervo, “weighs like a boulder” on the accounts of a Serie A covered in a non-trivial way by the internal dialectic (as demonstrated by the last meeting with blatant protest of about half of the clubs) but united by the need to unite to defend the business. Hence De Siervo’s applause for the first fines that the Guardia di Finanza has issued against customers: from 154 to 1,032 euros, as anticipated in the Only 24 Hours of 19 November. «Now whoever makes a mistake pays, it was the last necessary step in this battle».
First fines to customers. Are we really at a change of pace on the fight against piracy?
I would say yes, it was essential that this sense of impunity typical of our country end. We have come to punish not only the criminal organizations that spread pirated signals, but also those alleged fans who, by purchasing illegal season tickets, become accomplices to this outlawed and stupid system because they damage the club they declare eternal love for.
From a technical point of view, what can be the step forward now?
We are finally working in a different climate with politics and above all with Agcom, to arrive at obtaining an automatic procedure that allows pirate sites to be dropped while watching matches, as has been the case for some time in more mature systems such as the English one.