Fighting piracy is sacred, but Agcom’s overreach is dangerous. However, the government wants to ingratiate itself with Forza Italia and accepts this
Ci Roma 03/19/2023 – Italian Football League Championship / Lazio Roma / Photo by Carmelo Embesi / Image Sport In the photo: Claudio Lotito
Lotito inserts football saving law into Caifano decree. Written by Il Fatto newspaper, signed by Lorenzo Vendimiale.
What clause in the Caifano Decree – the decree that takes its name from a news tragedy and mandates urgent measures against child poverty and crime – helps Serie A better sell TV rights? We should ask the Meloni government, which introduced an amendment (which was surprisingly declared acceptable) to amend the anti-pesoto law.
“Piracy is killing football,” say football owners. Getting a few black-clad spectators out (about 4 million euros are lost daily) is the only way to save the sinking boat. Football asked for regulatory intervention and got it in the summer with an evolving law.
The Italian League also donated the Piracy Shield platform to AGCOM to prevent pirates. It works like this: They enter the suspicious signal on the portal, and the updated list in real time goes to the provider who, without needing authority approval, immediately pulls the plug. But this is still not enough.
Ball has been complaining for weeks that the law is ineffective. Its lobbyist, Senator Claudio Lotito, walks around Parliament carrying a folder full of changes: providers not only “can”, but “must” intervene; 3 months, not 6, to operate the platform; Signals go directly to the topics, bypassing the AGCOM. The amendments signed by the Forzista Ternullo-occhiuto duo (the same person who signed the extension of Serie A TV rights from 3 to 5 years) were included in a government text presented by Minister Sirianni. The agreement was made with Aboudi working in Sport and the blessing of Undersecretary Mantovano.
Hence the executive took up the issue of the ball (which has the advantage of not costing the state anything) to keep Lotito and his friends in Forza Italia in the Budget Committee in light of the budget vote.
If the fight against piracy is a sacred matter in essence, the changes demanded by football raise some problems in form. The platform, for example, has neither an Agcom filter (but who checks that only illegal sites are blocked and who takes responsibility for errors?), nor an unblocking protocol (so the list may become unmanageable). Angered by the losses, and suspected of obstruction by guarantors and TLC companies (whose streaming, even if illegal, is still traffic and therefore potential profit), football is trying to shift the burden of combating piracy onto the latter, to force them to do so. . It works on the platform. All it takes is a little patience, and time to work out the technicalities. However, the Italian League does not have time to deal with the sale of TV rights and the downward offers from DAZN and Sky (the decision will be made on Monday): it wants something immediately to avoid bankruptcy. The government is extending a helping hand, thanks to Lotito’s activism.
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