Serie A vs Premier League: Why Italy is losing fans

Italian football still has history, tactics and passion. What it lacks is the money, stadiums and global appeal to rival the Premier League for the attention of fans around the world.

Thirty years ago, there was no controversy. Serie A was the best league in the world, home to Maradona, Van Basten, Baggio and Batistuta in their prime and Football Italia on Channel 4 for a generation of British fans watching the match.

Today, the roles are reversed. The Premier League is the standard league for football fans from Lagos to Jakarta, while Serie A has become a league that fans enter rather than watch. The gap isn’t about the quality of a good weekend’s football. This is the structure and the numbers show how wide it is.

1. The money gap feeds itself

Every debate about Serie A’s decline ultimately comes back to money, because money decides everything: which players a league can keep, which ones it can sign, and how well the product will look on screen.

According to the latest figures from Deloitte, Premier League clubs generated £6.8 billion in revenue in one season, an increase of 8%. Series A earned €3 billion, up 4%. The Premier League is not just ahead; it gets further and further away every year.

Broadcast rights account for most of the difference. The Premier League’s current domestic deal with Sky Sports and TNT Sports is worth £6.7bn over four seasons, around £1.675bn a year. Serie A’s domestic deal with DAZN and Sky Italia is worth €4.5 billion over five seasons, roughly €900 million a year.

And that’s before the Premier League’s overseas rights are factored in, so the gap becomes a chasm. Higher revenue means higher salaries, better signings, more stars and more global interest, which in turn increases the value of the next TV deal. Serie A is stuck on the wrong side of this era.

2. Stadiums from another era

Watch a Premier League match and you see a modern pitch packed with crowds close to the pitch. Watch many Serie A matches and you’ll see runways, empty sections and concrete almost unchanged since Italia 90.

According to PwC, Italy built or modernized six stadiums between 2007 and 2024. England managed 13 and Germany 19 stadiums. Juventus remain one of the few Italian clubs to own their own ground, and when Italy named 10 possible venues for Euro 2032, a UEFA official said only the Allianz Stadium in Turin was ready.

San Siro, built in 1926, sums up the problem. Milan and Inter have spent years trying to replace him with plans tied up in politics and local opposition. Italy faces a deadline of October 2026 to approve five Euro 2032 stadiums to UEFA and faces the threat that matches could be moved to Turkey if progress falls short.

Old stadiums cost twice as much as Serie A. Clubs earn less on matchday: Deloitte projects Serie A’s matchday revenue in 2023-24 at €440m, less than half of the Premier League. The product looks worse on TV, which is important when you’re competing for overseas audiences.

3. Full bases versus half-empty ones

Italian football has no shortage of passionate fans. Attendances at Serie A games have rebounded strongly in recent seasons, with the big clubs drawing big crowds. The problem is consistency.

Source: Inside World Football, Europe’s top five leagues 2025-26.

The average Premier League pitch is 97% full. Serie A is about 81% full, the lowest among Europe’s big five leagues. One of the five seats is empty and the viewers at home are reporting.

4. Piracy drains the league

Italy’s piracy problem would be a crisis in any other industry. Serie A chief executive Luigi De Siervo said illegal broadcasting had cost the league about $345 million in lost revenue in one year. The league has called for tougher laws, including sanctions for viewers of illegal streams, but every euro lost to piracy is a euro not spent on players or stadiums.

There is also a closed circle here. High subscription prices drive fans to illegal streams of Serie A games, which reduces the value of the next rights deal, which in turn keeps prices high.

5. The stars moved on

The fans follow the players as much as the clubs, and the best players in the world now gather in England, Spain and Paris Saint-Germain. The 2026 Ballon d’Or shortlist made that point clear: only one of the 30 men nominated, Inter’s Lautaro Martinez, played club football in Serie A. He was also the league’s top scorer with 17 goals.

Italian clubs have been very good at finding and developing talent and then selling it. This keeps them solvent, but it also means that the league’s brightest players only become household names once they’ve gone to the Premier League or elsewhere.

6. The Premier League sells itself better

The Premier League has spent three decades building a global brand. Kick-off times suit Asian audiences, the league travels the world in pre-season and its broadcast sets the standard for others to watch.

Serie A has tried to catch up with the discussion of overseas matches and greater investment in its international reach. But it competes with a league of 20 clubs that is not only richer but better organized commercially, selling the same product to the same global audience.

How to watch Serie A in England and why it’s still struggling

Access is not a problem for English fans. In 2026-27, DAZN is showing all 380 Serie A games live in the UK, TNT Sports is showing two matches a week and BBC Alba is showing 38 games for free on BBC iPlayer. Anyone wondering where to watch Serie A in England has more options than ever since the days of Football Italia.

Still, the presence hasn’t turned into the same kind that the Premier League follows. Part of the reason is scheduling. The 2026-27 Serie A fixtures were published on 5 June, but exact dates and kick-off times are only confirmed in blocks of around seven match days. Match days 13-19, which will run from November 29 to January 10, were confirmed almost two months ago on September 25. This makes it harder for overseas fans to plan around Serie A than around a league that publishes its TV selections in advance.

Coverage is correct at time of writing. Contact broadcasters for current prices and schedules.

Which Serie A is still better

Verdict: Can Serie A close the gap?

Serie A will not overtake the Premier League in fan interest anytime soon. Financial opportunities are huge and are increasing every year. But you don’t need to beat the Premier League to progress. The growing gap must be stopped.

That means three things above all: building or modernizing stadiums so that full-courts become the norm, winning the fight against piracy so that rights deals reflect real audiences, and keeping their best players long enough for fans to fall in love with them.

Euro 2032 should be a catalyst. If Italy uses it to rebuild its stadiums, Serie A could have the infrastructure to properly market itself to a global audience for the first time in a generation. Otherwise, the Premier League will continue to retreat and the gap between the Premier League table and the Serie A table will be measured in fans as much as money.