Mia intervista di commento sull'evoluzione del management delle società di calcio italiane di serie A, pubblicata da Xinhua News Agency e ripresa dalle principali testate cinesi in lingua inglese, come Shanghai Daily.
By Marzia De Giuli
ROME, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The recent history of Serie A teams, once best among the European top flights, highlights the necessary introduction of a sports-business model to replace their traditional family management, a local expert told Xinhua in a recent interview.
MONEY FOR GLORY
When Italian clubs such as Inter Milan, Juventus and AC Milan conquered Europe over the past decades, they were financed by notable families who "spared no expense to attract the world' s best players to play in their teams," said Enrico Flavio Giangreco, an author and marketing professor.
"The best teams of Serie A were in all respects family companies which were willing to invest a lot of financial resources without paying any attention to costs," he said.
He explained to Xinhua that Italian clubs used to have considerable incomes from the sale of television rights to big corporations which were broadcasting football matches.
But as much as between 70 and 80 percent of that turnover, Giangreco stressed, "was ending up in the pockets of players, whose remunerations expanded exponentially."
As a result, Italian clubs were able to win titles because they had the best players, who joined Serie A to seek plump pay.
Thanks to this system, the Italian soccer was basking in approval and admiration brought about by their excellent results, said the author, whose latest book "Marketing and communication in sports" published last year analyses the relation between entertainment and business.
"Just think of AC Milan' s impressive results, or Juventus, who won the 1996 Champions League in addition to the other two appearances in the final over the past 20 years, and also Inter Milan -- the latest Italian team to win the Champions League in 2010," Giangreco said.
AN UNSUSTAINABLE MODEL
Inter' s victory, however, was "the last product of that kind of family management," Giangreco stressed. What happened? The Italian model was "unbalanced" because, year after year, those clubs were continuing to win at the cost of increasingly poor balance sheets, he noted.
"Especially from mid-1990s onwards, despite their teams were achieving important results, owners had to write a check at the end of each year to cover losses," Giangreco said.
But the golden economic times are over and families have been forced to give up something, he pointed out.
In 2012, the expert noted, Italy' s Serie A registered a total loss of around 300 million euros (412 million U.S. dollars). In the same financial year, turnovers of Milan and Juventus (256.9 million euros and 195.4 million euros) were far more below that of Real Madrid (512.6 million euros) and Barcelona (483 million euros).
The Moratti family in 2013 sold the majority stake of Inter Milan to Indonesian tycoon Erick Thohir, while there has also been speculation in recent months about a possible takeover of Milan.
"We are grateful to the families which were able to bring great successes to Italian teams," Giangreco said. But they were also compromising themselves as they treated their soccer clubs as their "family toys" instead of real companies, he added.
"Their economic model is not sustainable anymore, and they have to switch to a sports-business model, where revenues and costs are managed in a businesslike way, as any business economics textbooks indicates," he said.
FROM "FAMILY TOY" TO "SPORTS BUSINESS"
Giangreco noted that Milan' s owner, the family of three-time Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, was the first to enlarge its business view by introducing business elements such as sponsorships, partnerships and merchandising, and later by making restructuring choices. But their Serie A arch-rivals Juventus did better.
"The Agnelli family, owner of Juventus, who well understood where the world was getting at, decided to build the first proprietary stadium in Italy in 2011," Giangreco said.
A proprietary stadium, the expert said, is a very profit-making investment.
"It works seven days a week offering a series of services from restaurants and bars to exhibitions and museums, thus it is an extraordinary source of income," he said.
He cited as an example that many football supporters in Britain who decide to hold their wedding dinner at the restaurant of their team' s stadium. And there is a variety of possible related businesses, including hotels where newly married couples could even spend their first wedding night, he added.
Building a proprietary stadium with sufficient marketing usually means being able to "loyalize" supporters through a series of activities, from "branded" items to even cemeteries that are already being organized in some countries, he said.
The Italian clubs also need to optimize costs, Giangreco pointed out. Rather than having paid all players too much, irrespective of their technical level, those clubs have to increasingly diversify remunerations by envisaging a new system with basic wage, salary cap and performance bonus.
He also advised the clubs to invest every year in youth sectors so as to ensure that their own academies could produce decent players.
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE TITLE STILL POSSIBLE
The Serie A clubs, which are suffering from mismanagement and economic crisis, should renovate their model with an open mind and internationalized view by starting from availing themselves of professional managers, said Giangreco.
The UEFA financial fair play regulations, which have been brought in to prevent professional soccer clubs spending more than they earn, will contribute to the positive evolution of the Italian clubs, he explained to Xinhua.
"I think Italian clubs will become strong again," Giangreco said. "It will take just as long as these new principles, and therefore the ability to develop soccer business, are carried out properly by those clubs," he said.
"For example, if Thohir is left free to make his own choices to manage sports business, Inter Milan will continue to be highly competitive. Juventus has already started this road, while Milan right now is pondering a change which they know is necessary," the expert added.
"What I believe is that an Italian team will win the Champions League within the next three or four years, and I wish my prediction is not true, and that means the surprise will arrive even earlier," he said.
