Italy/Serie A TIM: AGCOM (regulatory authority) opens an investigation into DAZN's audience figures

AGCOM, the regulator and competition authority for the communication sector in Italy, has announced the launch of an investigation into the methodology used to calculate the audiences reported by the OTT platform DAZN, on 16/09/2021.

DAZN, which has acquired the rights to broadcast the 10 Serie A TIM games per matchday (including 7 exclusively) for €840m per year over the 2021-2024 cycle, announced the following audiences for the first three matchdays of the 2021-22 season, according to data from the Nielsen Institute:
Matchday 1: 4.3 million viewers
Matchday 2: 4.7 million viewers
Matchday 3: 6 million viewers

These figures do not correspond to those measured by the Italian audience measurement institute Auditel, the historical reference institute for TV audiences in Italy, which has also measured fourth-screen (smartphone, tablet, PC, TV) audiences since 2019.

For example, according to Nielsen data, SSC Napoli - Juventus (2-1, 11/09/2021), on Matchday 3 of the 2021-22 Serie A TIM, was watched on average by 1.62 million people, while for Auditel the match drew an average of 960,000…