Mediaset-Fir agreement: but Treviso must contribute to the costs of the Italian broadcaster of the competition. The turning point after seven years also to relaunch the movement exhausted by the defeats of the national team in the Six Nations
TREVISO. The Lions are back in the clear. The matches of the Union Rugby Championship extended to the South Africans will be broadcast by Mediaset, on channel 20, which becomes the Italian broadcaster of the competition.
After 7 years, Benetton and Zebre will be visible without additional payments or fees, and this is undoubtedly one of the points on which Fir insists to relaunch the movement, exhausted by the defeats of the national team in the Six Nations.
But it is the terms of the agreement that are less cheerful for Treviso and consequently for the Zebras. The Milanese giant puts on the plate a contribution of about one third of the production costs, the remaining two thirds are borne by the interested parties who will go to the small screen.
And consequently Benetton, like the ducal franchise of Parma, will have to bear around 100,000 euros in expenses. The well-informed say that the company would have appreciated a different role in the negotiations on television rights, but that Fir is betting a lot on the return to the clear. And since we are talking about TV, a nice debut for streaming the friendly match with the Sale: almost 700 web contacts, from Canada to New Zealand.
Free-to-air TV and much more were discussed in the interview that the federal president Marzio Innocenti had in Calalzo with the green-and-white management, after greeting all the team that was in retreat in the Cadore area, on the eve of the match with the Sale Sharks which marked the debut of the new course with the Italian head coach (the last one was Umberto Casellato, in 2013).
The official speech of the president was very centered on the awareness of the international competitiveness achieved by Treviso, and the president recalled the joy of the Rainbow and the importance of Treviso’s success in the spring event. It is no coincidence that he wished “the best continuity of results” in Treviso for the season that will begin on 25 September.
But then Innocenti reaffirmed the priority of the national team for the movement, that Italy that he led as captain at the first historic 1987 World Cup in New Zealand, and who today needs results like oxygen. And in this key he wanted to remember how the Treviso staff, with the highest blue rate – Bortolami, Ongaro, Masi among others – represent at the same time a model and a stimulus, to give the Lions the horizon and the value of the National he seeks absolute victories.
An extremely calibrated speech on the many young people who crowd the squad of Treviso, which the Federation looks to with confidence to get out of the quicksand of the last technical cycles.
And speaking of young people, after the official team dinner, management and president and, Innocenti talks with the management and the technical staff followed, to better define the synergies between the federation and Benetton in the upcoming season. And the number one of Italian rugby has given the guarantee on the departure of the Treviso Academy in the summer of 2022 – just in a year’s time – which will become the laboratory of the future of both the club andlla national team, and which should play – in parallel with the first team – an under 23 Urc, giving the best promises of our rugby the opportunity to compete also at club level with the other Academies.
A structure that Treviso had been asking for for years, already in Gavazzi’s mandates, but had always been postponed until now.
For his part, at the dinner, Zatta thanked Innocenti for the visit and for the speech, reaffirming Benetton’s commitment to “international competitiveness, but also the parallel commitment to the Italian movement, aware of its role”.
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