The future of the Italian stadiums: an empirical analysis

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Real Madrid and Barcelona. Just consider that the museum of Barcelona, which is 
located inside the stadium, is the most visited museum in Spain, with more than 
1,000,000 visitors per year. Real Madrid, the leader in the annual study of Deloitte 
called “Football Money League”, has revenues coming out from the stadium that 
counts for 23% of its total revenues. A huge percentage compared to the Italian 
context, where the revenues from the stadium count for less than the 13%. In 
Bundesliga, the third important European championship, after the 2006 World cup, 
stadiums are the most modern. Thanks to this “revolution”, the attendance in the 
stadiums reached record numbers during the last seasons. 
In Italy, we are very far from the cited contexts. Italian stadiums are old, dirty, not 
comfortable, unsecure and far from the city centre. Italian fans are losing their 
patience while waiting for new structures, new services and more securities. Fans 
are tired of dirty places, far away parking and dangerous supporters. The Serie A 
attendance has rapidly decreased in the last years, reaching an average of 26,000 
fans per match.  Many Italian supporters are no more considered like promoters of 
the stadium, but they have become exactly the opposite during the years. Nowadays, 
many Italians supporters prefer to watch the game at home, in a comfortable and 
secure situation. Although these things, in the last three years, Italian passionate 
increased, and count today 50% of the population. The most important component is 
the “soft part” of the fans that increased from 12% to 15%.  
Many clubs, many institutions, many municipalities understand that it’s time to 
change how the Italian stadiums are seen and perceived. The Italian government last 
October undertook one of the first steps (it’s processed to the senate). This step is a 
new, very important law concerning procedures/ actions to follow when a club 
decides to build a new stadium. This law regulates also the collaboration between the 
parts of the project, during the starting up of the project. This issue is crucial, since 
cooperation could sensibly reduce the decision process timing. 
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F.C. Juventus is the first club in Italy that has projected the construction of a new 
stadium. The club has designed a structure, benchmarked on the English model, with 
peripherals services that enable the stadium to be open 7 days out of 7. The idea is 
the creation of a multi purpose stadium opened all week, with a cinema, fitness 
centre, museum and a mall. The new stadium effect could increase both attendance 
and incomes of the club. Many important objectives could be reached by the club, 
such as increasing the offer to attract new partners, reinforcing revenues, enlarging 
the use of the structure (Multiple use) and differentiate the potential customers. 
Taking into consideration these new “trends revenues” from multiple use structure, 
many Italian clubs are designing new projects for the creation of new stadiums. 
Following the vestiges of F.C. Juventus, also Genoa, Sampdoria, Fiorentina, Napoli 
and Inter start the collaboration with municipalities, service companies and stylists for 
the creation of new structures.  
Following these initial reflections, this work is focused on the difference between the 
perceived experience of English and Italian fans. In chapters 5 and 6 it will be 
analyzed how the club guarantees acceptable services level in its football stadiums. 
Four in depth interviews were also conducted to gather a better point of view of the 
situation in the Italian Clubs. Consequently, a Premier League survey based on fan 
attendance was taken into consideration to highlight how the English fans perceive 
the stadium and its services. This review resulted very useful because it gives a 
complete view of the English Premier League. Afterwards, in the last three months a 
questionnaire, created in collaboration with F.C. Juventus, has been submitted to the 
Italian market fans. The questionnaire follows the slipstream of the English survey to 
guarantee a better comparison between the collected and received data.  
This thesis was designed to assess the overall level of satisfaction of spectators 
attending a match in the stadiums. The study has focused on football structures, the 
services offer and perceived satisfaction among fans. The intention of fans in new 
stadiums was analyzed as well, together with their willingness to pay for new 
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services. Mullin, Hardy, and Sutton (2000) emphasized that sport organizations need 
to focus on products/ services extensions since sport marketers have little or no 
control over their core product or game. Product extensions include the physical 
environment surrounding the core product that are identified in business and industry 
as “services cape” (Bitner, 1992) and have been referred to as “sports cape” in the 
sport industry (Wakefield & Sloan, 1995). Apparently, providing more comfortable 
seats won’t be enough. 
This project aims at demonstrating the advantages of new fully furnished stadiums 
both on fan satisfaction and teams revenues. After presenting the “state of the art” of 
Italian football teams and organizations in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 explores the crucial 
new role of the stadium, for the clubs, the fans, as well as for the environment. The 
backwardness of the Italian way to manage stadiums emerges in Chapter 4, through 
the comparison with the European benchmark. Chapter 5 briefly presents the 
“Premier League Fan Survey” and its results in terms of fan attitude and satisfaction 
with the English stadiums. As stated before, this research was considered to 
structure the questionnaire posed to the Italian fans. The following chapters present 
the structure of the analysis and the outcome necessary to understand how to 
intervene. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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2. Football structure and Italian case 
 
Sport is a huge market that is established all over the world. Sport is a sector full of 
public and private interests. Italian market reached, in 2007, a business of 2.7 Billions 
€, with an annual increase of 2% from 2000. This was due to broadcasting, ticketing, 
licensing and merchandising. Inside sports, soccer is able to cover more than a half 
of the entire business.  
The economic importance of business of football in Italy is confirmed from the 2008 
information: almost 40 Millions Italians are interested in football and 30 Millions have 
a “heart team”; more than 25 Millions “follow” football on tv and radio.  
Football is a worldwide sport, game and business. In Europe Football is the most 
viewed and famous sport. It is a very important sector for the Worldwide Economy. 
One important characteristic of football is affiliation. That is the capacity of some 
clubs to affiliate, involve clients and make them faithful customers. This is possible 
because clubs don’t offer only products or services but a solution to a need of 
aggregation. In fact, fan himself tries to participate to all the events of the clubs.  
National and international associations in term of business and structure regulate the 
environment of football. F.I.F.A (Fédération Internationale de Football association) is 
one of the biggest international football organizations in the world. With the head 
office in Zurich, the organization counts more than 200 football federations. The 
objectives of the F.I.F.A are to develop the rules of the game and guarantee the 
respect of them, to organize international competitions, to increase permanently the 
football game and spread it in the world, to fight against discrimination and racism, 
control any type of federation and promote friendly relationship between internal 
members in humanitarian and social terms. Another important association is U.E.F.A. 
(Union des Association Europèénnes de Football) with the head office in Nyon, 
Gineva. U.E.F.A. collaborates with F.I.F.A. for its activities and it is responsible for 
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the organization of European competitions, for their National team and for the 
development of the European Football. 
The most important national organization in Italy is C.O.N.I (Comitato Olimpico 
Nazionale Italiano). This organization has the function to address the Italian sport to 
the international guidelines. C.O.N.I. is divided into federations. Every federation 
refers to a specific sport. For football, the federation is called F.I.G.C. (Federazione 
Italiana Giuoco Calcio). The President is Giancarlo Abete. F.I.G.C. is a federation 
that regulates all the teams, associations and other organisms that persecute the 
object of playing football in Italy. Its functions are to promote, discipline and control 
the activities of the game following the F.I.F.A. and U.E.F.A. guidelines.  
An association that is part of F.I.G.C. is “Lega Nazionale Professionisti” called “Lega 
Calcio”. “Lega calcio” has the purpose to regulate all the Italian Championship and 
cups. The functions of the “Lega Calcio” are to promote general and collective 
interests of the associated teams, organize Italian Championship and cups (Serie A, 
Serie B, Coppa Italia, Supercoppa Italiana, Primavera championship and cup), and to 
redistribute the financial resources gained from TV broadcasting and various 
sponsorship. Another function of “Lega calcio” is the monitoring of stadium, to grant 
some certification of security for the structure and to help clubs improving stadiums 
and local environment. From 2009, the President of this organ is Maurizio Beretta. 
The major Italian Championship is Serie A with 20 clubs. The most famous teams are 
F.C. Inter, A.C Milan, F.C. Juventus, A.S Roma, A.C.F Fiorentina and S.S Lazio. 
Serie A was always considered like one of the most famous and important 
Championship in the world. Italians top teams participate every year to the U.E.F.A 
Champions League with good results every year. A.C. Milan won the cup 2 times in 
the last 6 years. Serie B is the lower Italian Championship with 22 clubs in it. Every 
year 3 teams are promoted from Serie B to Serie A.  
After these considerations, it is possible to say that the structure of football is very 
wide. Many organizations and associations interact and cooperate to create/ develop 
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a strong and complete structure with defined criteria and rules. Many clubs need to 
be regulated and the system needs laws, rules to be respected in order to create 
continues and trusted games. 
This close examination is done for having a better view of the sector structure and to 
understand some of the strongest association that organize teams in National and 
International competitions.