The attraction of the top professional football league in Italy – Serie A – is still intact after many decades, despite the fact that Juventus, AC Milan or Inter Milan, the historic clubs of the league, might have become less popular than Barcelona or Real Madrid and their Spanish rivals. Ever more people are looking for free streaming of games in Serie A reflecting tendencies in the overall growth of TV watching and media consumption.

Availability of Serie A matches is a pivotal matter for fans residing around the world. Indeed, up to now, watching Serie A has involved accessing a specific cable network or sports programme by subscribing to a proper package. The digital revolution, however, has changed standards, so that many fans now expect to watch a match without paying for a subscription fee. This fact is due to many factors, including the high costs of sport rights that are then passed on to consumers, as well as a generational transition towards web access.

Free streaming sites are currently the most popular solution if not always the easiest answer, and are a source of controversy. Many of these sites take advantage of different grey areas in digital rights, streaming live sport without permission and offering the contests for free. Illicit streams benefits many football fans. There are some who would be unable to watch football unless these sites were in operation. But illegal streams cause huge problems in the form of copyright and sustainability issues as claimed by those who hold the exclusive rights to broadcast on certain channels and those who broadcast the sport.

However, the demand for free streaming of Serie A games nonetheless increased over time. This is partly due to the tribal aspect of football fandom, the camaraderie within friend groups that make watching together so socially significant. Often, fans ended up on free streams as an ‘aimed detour’, a final desperate option in the face of total lack of affordable legal viewing lines, or the cost of paying migration agents to obtain visas. The situation shows how the old sports broadcasting model of exclusivity and high fees collides with today’s digital consumer who prefers ease, flexibility and affordability.

Serie A and broadcasters have reacted accordingly. On the one hand, they’ve sought to crackdown on illegal streaming websites with both the courts and more sophisticated firewall technologies. On the other, in order to anticipate this form of consumer behaviour, some broadcasters have started offering more flexible and less costly viewing packages, including online-only subscriptions, pay-per-view options and so on.

In addition, Serie A itself has recently experimented with new ways of broadcasting to the digital audience, including in-depth digital stories, fan connections and deeper online end-products, which can release an official, richer alternative to pirate TV. 

In the end, watching Serie A or partite gratis serie A in the foreseeable future will probably follow an opportunistic mix of these trends: stricter intervention against illegal streaming, combined with a gradual harmonisation of the market to the realities of digital consumption. Ideally, for supporters, this will result in easier and fairer access to games, while for both the league and its broadcasters it will represent the challenge to find a business model that guarantees the satisfaction of both competitive and disappointed global audiences alike – a recipe for the continued (and sustainable) development of Serie A.