Italian football looks set to adopt the model of the English Premier League, after 19 of the 20 Serie A clubs voted yesterday to break away from their domestic competition, the Lega Calcio.

At the heart of the issue, unsurprisingly, is the distribution of television rights. Serie A clubs sell their rights individually, rather than collectively, which means that bigger sides, such as Juventus or AC Milan, earn in excess of £85 million each for domestic rights, while smaller clubs, such as Chievo, rake in a paltry £4 million.

In exchange for this arrangement, Serie A clubs contribute a lump sum to their counterparts in Serie B. This amounted to £90 million — about 20 per cent of the TV revenue — until last year and was negotiated down to £60 million for this season. Because each club’s contribution was proportional to the size of their TV deal, Serie A clubs grudgingly accepted the status quo, as it did not cost the smaller clubs very much and it allowed the bigger clubs to continue enjoying huge broadcasting deals.

However, as of the 2010-11 season, Serie A rights will be sold collectively (as is the case in the Premier League and most European nations), which means TV monies are likely to be distributed more equally up and down the table. For Serie A’s big clubs, it is a bitter pill to swallow, which is why they have been trying to reduce (and, eventually, eliminate) their contributions to Serie B. When negotiations on this point stalled, Serie A took the bold move of breaking away entirely.

It is a crushing blow to second-tier clubs who, on average, lost about £5 million last season, even with the £90 million contribution from the top flight. For a long time, many Serie B clubs have lived well above their means, paying wages comparable to those in the Coca-Cola Championship, despite the fact that the average attendance is about a third as high and stadium revenues are one tenth of those in the English second tier. That said, the feeling among Serie A clubs is that they simply cannot afford to continue bankrolling the lavish spending habits of Serie B clubs.

The ball is squarely in the court of the Italian FA (FIGC), which, by law, will almost certainly take over the running of the Lega Calcio, as the Serie A and B clubs will not be able to reach an agreement. At that point, there will be two possible outcomes. Either the FIGC succeeds in reaching some kind of mediated settlement or, more likely, Serie A will break away, albeit with the blessing of the Italian FA, because doing so outside the FIGC’s control would create serious problems with Uefa and Fifa.

This latter scenario is the most plausible, especially because it is likely that the Serie A clubs already have been given the green light from the FIGC. Thus, 17 years after the creation of the Premier League, Italian football looks set to follow suit.