Lega Serie A is putting the betting and data rights for Italian football’s three biggest tournaments to tender, presenting a big opportunity for the right bidder.
The Italian football governing body announced that it will issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the betting and data rights to the Serie A Championship, Coppa Italia Frecciarossa, and EA Sports Supercup.
The rights up for grabs cover the 2025/2026 to 2028/2029 seasons, totalling four campaigns overall. Interested companies have been asked to respond to the RFP via email, with eight different packages available.
Stats Perform was previously the holder to the 2024/25-2028/29 rights, but withdrew from the agreement unexpectedly early this year, promoting legal action by Lega Serie A. based on this, it is unlikely that the firm will put in a bid for the new rights package.
Serie A stands out as one of Europe’s most widely watched, and as a result widely bet on, football leagues. Domestic viewership averages between three million and six million people per weekend via DAZN, the league’s main broadcast partner.
A factor which may make the league’s betting streaming and data rights more valuable is the league’s growing popularity in the US. The league has cited a 50% increase in live TV viewership in the US during the 2024/25 season, for example, and Inter Milan‘s success in the 2024/25 UEFA Champions League may help to drive engagement even further.
The fact that nearly 17 million Americans have some or total Italian ancestry may have contributed to this. Speaking to SBC Media’s Insider Sport last year, Andy Mitchell, CEO and Managing Director of Lega Serie A USA, cited the connection many Americans feel with Italy coupled with the league’s on-pitch appeal as contributing heavily to its stateside growth.
“The thing that’s really exciting about Serie A is the unpredictability of the league,” he said. “In some of the other leagues in Europe it’s the same one or two clubs that continue to perform and win every year, in Serie A over the last five seasons we’ve had four different champions.”
This surging US audience may be of interest to the likes of FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM. This in turn may present an opportunity to join the dots between Italian football betting data and US demand to the right sportstech firm or data supplier.
As stated above, there are eight total packages on offer. The most all-encompassing is Package A, an International Sports Betting Package covering streaming, match data and coach data for betting use in all territories outside Italy.
Domestic betting data rights are covered in Package B. While US demand may be driving much of the growth, Italy remains Serie A’s primary market and is still one of Europe’s largest betting markets — albeit a difficult one for smaller firms to stand out in, amid challenging regulatory reforms.
Package C covers media data rights, Package D covers sports betting tracking data and Package E covers media tracking data. The remaining three are billed as different variants of package F and are combinations of the above – F(a) being a combo of A and B, F(b) a combo of A, B and D, and F(c) being C and E.
So who could be in the running for these rights? As stated above, Stats Perform – while one of the global leaders in sports data rights as seen by deals like a betting data partnership with the EFL signed last year – has already withdrawn from a prior agreement. As such, it is unlikely to reapply four months down the line.
Other contenders are of course Sportradar, which already maintains a huge sports partner portfolio including UEFA, NBA, ATP Tour, MLB and Nascar. Likewise, Genius Sports is a dominant player in sports data, holding deals with the NFL and FootballDataCo (FDC), the data rights holder to the Premier League and EFL.
As with any industry though, sports data is no stranger to challengers and new competitors. ALT Sports Data broke through earlier this year penning deals with Formula One and bet365, while other players in the market include Statsbomb and Statscore.
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