Italy's Antitrust Authority is set to greenlight the deal which will see Rupert Murdoch's News Corp sell Italian pay-TV platform Stream to Vivendi Universal, if Vivendi's Telepiu complies with new conditions regarding its ownership of pay-TV rights to Hollywood movies.

According to unconfirmed reports, the Italian watchdog will demand that when Telepiu renegotiates contracts with US studios in 2004 and 2008, it reduces the duration of its ownership of pay-TV rights to movies.

Similar time limits are also understood to apply to football rights, whose hugely inflated prices currently represent one of the main sources of loss for Italy's beleagured pay-TV operators.

Telepiu, one of the major financiers of Italian film, is expected to comply with the authority's conditions, enabling the Euros 545m buy-out deal to go through.

The merger will put an end to over a year of manoeuvring on the part of both pay-TV platforms, who are desperately trying to curtail the massive losses they continue to incur.

Telepiu's losses amounted to some Euros 220m in 2001, while Stream lost Euros 400m. Telepiu has around 1.8 million subscribers while Stream has some 800,000 customers.

The two media giants reached an agreement in February after News Corp bought Telecom Italia's 50% share of Stream for Euros 48m. The move enabled News Corp, which already owned the other 50%, to sell Stream to Vivendi, paving the way for Vivendi's Telepiu' to become the only pay-TV outfit operating in Italy.