Events

Lega Serie A strikes new Supercoppa deal with Saudi Arabia

Featured image credit: oscar federico bodini/CC BY-SA 2.0/Edited for size

Saudi Arabia will host four of the next six editions of football’s Supercoppa Italiana, with the competition to expand to a four-team tournament from next year.

Lega Serie A, the governing body of the top division of Italian football, announced the hosting deal yesterday (Monday) following a meeting of the 20 top-tier clubs.

The change to a four-team competition from a one-off match between two teams will see the Supercoppa Italiana adopt the same format of the Supercopa de España, which is also held in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia will host the next two editions of the Supercoppa, before the tournament takes place elsewhere for the following two events. It will then return to Saudi Arabia for two more editions.

The next Supercoppa will feature the top two finishers from Serie A, as well as the Coppa Italia finalists. Lega Serie A chief executive Luigi De Siervo said that next season’s four-team tournament would bring in €23m (£20.3m/$24.7m).

The King Fahd International Stadium in the Saudi capital of Riyadh hosted the most recent Supercoppa in January. The 2021-22 event took place at the San Siro in Milan.

Mapei Stadium, home of Sassuolo, hosted the 2020-21 Supercoppa in January 2021 after Lega Serie A opted to return the match to domestic soil following two editions in Saudi Arabia.

In June 2018, the Lega struck a controversial deal to take the Supercoppa to Saudi Arabia in three of the following five years. Games were subsequently played in January 2019, December 2019 and January 2023.