Berlusconi Suing Football Because He’s Losing Money
By: Martha | January 26th, 2007
Mediaset, AKA one of Silvio Berlsuconi’s many media arms, is taking “legal action” against the Italian football league because, well, they’re not making as much money as they want to, and any fool can see it’s football’s fault. Italian football has been losing audiences for a few years, and it’s a situation that Berlusconi and his flunkies quite reasonably believe has been made worse by last summer’s Calciopoli scandal and the resulting descent of Juventus to Serie B. Because Mediaset bought the TV rights to Serie A in May, right before all hell broke loose in the league and Juve vanished, they feel they’re entitled to a renegotiation of their fee (alleged to be about €50 million for the year, plus €61.7 million for highlights rights). It’s sort of like shareholders suing companies for decreasing in value, you know? Madness.
That said, though, it actually makes a twisted kind of sense: The football league handed down the Calciopoli penalties, so Mediaset are going right to what they consider to be the source of decreasing value of the product they bought. After all, if the football league had just kept sweeping everything under the rug like they usually do, everything would be fine. The one time they ball up and actually do something about the corruption, they get sued. That’ll teach them to stand up for truth and justice and all that nonsense.
Category: 
Subscribe
|
Print
|
Share
      |
Comments are closed
Home 
