Sky Italia, the broadcasting giant in the country, has secured domestic pay-TV rights to Lega Basket Serie A (LBA), the top tier Italian basketball league, for the next three seasons.
The agreement covers the 2025-2026, 2026-2027, and 2027-2028 seasons.
The offer from Sky was chosen by the Lega Basket Serie A assembly during a meeting yesterday (July 14) following a tender process.
Broadcasters were given until May 29 to submit initial bids to the league, which handled the sales process in-house. This was followed by a period of private negotiations with broadcasters, after which Sky came out on top.
Sky will replace the previous LBA domestic rightsholder DAZN.
The global sports streaming service held LBA’s domestic pay-TV rights for the 2022-23 to 2024-25 cycle, picking them up when it acquired the Eleven Sports broadcaster in September 2022.
Providing satellite television coverage had been a requirement in the tender for the previous rights cycle, and since Eleven (and DAZN) did not have their own satellite distribution, they sublicensed to US media group Warner Bros. Discovery, which had shown the league on its Eurosport channel to fulfil the obligation.
WBD had a second active deal for Lega Basket rights, struck directly with the league to provide free-to-air coverage on its DMAX and Nove channels. It showed one game per round of the regular season, some play-off matches, the Coppa Italia, and the Supercoppa Italiana live.
As part of Sky’s new deal, it will broadcast 60 regular season games live, two from each round, two playoff quarter-final games per day, all semi-finals, and the finals.
The pay-TV heavyweight will also show the Coppa Italia, and the Supercoppa Italiana, for which it has additionally acquired the free-to-air rights.
Coverage will be provided on the dedicated Sky Basket channel, which also features North America’s NBA and the EuroLeague and EuroCup club competitions, and the broadcaster’s Now streaming platform.
Sky recently renewed its deal to show the EuroLeague and EuroCup through the 2027-28 campaign, while its new rights deal for the NBA, agreed last year, begins in October.
The Sky Basket channel will also show the upcoming 2025 EuroBasket national teams tournament.
