Serie A – The Great North American Dream!
Getting back into Italian football in the last twelve or so months, I have noticed that the Italian top flight has been embraced by a greater number of North Americans.
Footballers have been making the crossing to the peninsula for a few decades now. Alexi Lalas called Padova home for a few years in the 1990s, Michael Bradley played for both Chievo and Roma and Sergino Dest called Milan home for a season.
Today we have Tim Weah and Winston McKennie at Juventus, Christian Pulisic has been hhining at AC Milan alongside Yanus Musah and Tanner Tessmann might be a wanted man but he’s currently still at Venezia.
But more intriguing to me has been the influx of North American owners into the league.
Both Milan sides are being run by huge American investment firms. ACF Fiorentina are owned Rocco Commisso, who was born in Italy but made his fortune in the States. Bologna are run by Canadian businessman Joey Saputo. Europa League winners have a majority stakeholder in New Yorker Stephen Pagliuca. US Business tycoon Dan Friedkin is the owner and president of AS Roma. 777 Partners, a private investment firm based out of Miami, have the Genoa CFC within their portfolio. Kyle Krause and his family company own and run Parma. Finance expert Duncan L. Niederauer is currently at the helm at Venezia.
As you can see quite a few of these names suggest an Italian heritage has played a major part in these men and companies focusing on Italian football. Italian immigrants often took traditions and loves with them to the new land; like their homeland’s cuisine, the sense of family and the beloved calcio!
Kids would learn about the game of soccer from parents and grandparents and they hear how Italy ruled the world on those football fields.
That deep connection would definitely have driven a few North Americans to the old country. But these are generally very smart business folk, they don’t just spend dollars on a nostalgic project.
Italian football clubs would also represent decent value, especially compared to clubs from other big leagues like the Premier League, La Liga and the Bundesliga. Now obviously the ownership model in German isn’t super attractive to buyers who want complete control of a football club but all of these countries have better paid TV deals and that pushes the price up when it comes to buying one of their top flight sides. Look at England, you are now seeing a Billionaire putting in cash just to get control of the football business at Manchester United not for complete control – for many that isn’t viable or affordable.
You can pick up an Italian club and even with that cheaper price you can still get a global brand and a team that has a long history within the game plus a decent fanbase. You’re also getting operations that are fit for business when it comes to training facilities, footballing expertise and a sports science programme that was viewed as world class for many years.
There also seems to be an easier avenue to compete with the bigger clubs and create new successes with your new toy. Serie A has had four different winners in the past five seasons with Inter, AC Milan, Juventus and Napoli all taking the Scudetto. Seven different teams have qualified for the Champions League spots since 2020, Italian teams record in Europe has been very good recently and that has seen them receive five spots for this season’s Champions League. Last term Atalanta won the Europa League. Roma won the very first Conference League in the two season following the Gaillorosso’s triumph Fiorentina have been the competition’s runners up in both occasions. Getting more teams into Europe and doing well the these elite continental competitions the big swell these owners will see in their coffers.
Interestingly these extremely rich owners don’t get it all their own way in Italy and there is one big battle that they still need to overcome if they’re going to fully realise their potential income revenues with these Italian institutions.
Historically Italian football stadia is owned by the local council or municipality. Thus meaning that the clubs themselves don’t get the greater share of matchday revenue and will pay rent to play in a stadium that’s probably in need of restoration work.
Lots of the North American affiliated teams have looked into either buying their current homes or building their own new stadia. It hasn’t been an easy process at all.
Both Milan sides have floated leaving the grand old San Siro. The Municipality of Venice owns Venezia’s base, the Genoese equivalent owns the fantastic Stadio Luigi Ferraris and the same goes for Parma.
Ever since taking control of the club in 2019, Fiorentina’s owner Rocco Commisso has being fighting with the local council to either build his own stadium or renovate the Stadio Franchi to suit the La Viola’s needs. The municipality have started their own renovations and Commisso met that with anger and he tried to halt the work by taking the owners to court.
AS Roma seem to have been a bit more diplomatic with the mayor of Rome as they seek to leave the government owned Stadio Olimpico. Just this week it was announced that positive talks were held regarding Roma building a new stadium in the Eternal City with Ryan Friedkin stating:
It was an honor to meet today with the Mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, and present our vision for the new stadium. This extraordinary stadium is not only a new home for AS Roma and its fans but also a landmark for all the citizens of Rome.
Atalanta purchased their ground in 2017 and major reconstruction begun at the Gewiss Stadium in Bergamo back in 2019 and is now near completion. Both the Curva Nord and Curva Sud have been massively upgraded and that should see the capacity leap from 19,000 to around 25,000.
When you walk around the Gewiss stadium as I did back in March you can see why the owners of Italian clubs want to have their own stadiums and why they don’t want to deal with Municipality owned grounds. If needs be you can up the amount of seats in the stadium, upping the tickets you can sell. You can also cater the way you like to your well established audience. North America is known for providing some of the best fan experiences in the whole world and by offering those better atmospheres and facilities you get people coming more regularly and spending more time and money in your establishments. At the Gewiss stadium you notice that there’s a number of bars, restaurants and shops at the facility. Instead of being the renters you now get multiple rents from other businesses.
Athletic Club in Spain should be the blueprint teams in Italy should be looking to follow if they can get their hands on their own stadia. The La Liga side have an amazing museum, offer a wonderful stadium tour, they have a club shop on the premises, it has a cafe that opens at breakfast and serves drinks throughout the day and they also boast a Michelin Starred restaurant. The San Mamés makes money everyday of the week and particularly on match days.
It’s crazy to think that quite a few Italian teams don’t have club shops at the stadium in which they play and can’t offer stadium tours to the tourists that flock to their historic grounds.
I am extremely interested to see where we go from here, in terms of North Americans owning Italian football clubs.
Do they end up leaving because they just can’t find common ground with the bureaucrats that simply block them at every turn to gain complete control of the famous Italian institutions? Or can they work together with those in power and create a new harmony that could see Serie A truly flourish again and compete financially with Europe’s other top leagues?
Posted on August 2nd, 2024 by scott
Filed under: Article
Leave a Reply