The Media as a Policy Instrument in Influencing the Business Model of Professional Soccer: Evidence From Italy

Italian soccer clubs in the first division have individually sold broadcasting rights for their home matches, until new laws imposed pooling and joint-selling those rights through the league and established a mandatory sharing rule to redistribute revenues in order to improve on-the-pitch competitive balance (CB). This article compares the two institutional designs. While reducing revenue inequality, the new regime distorts allocative efficiency and informational rent appropriation, opens up costly ex post renegotiations and antitrust litigations, and does not improve CB.