Italian football clubs have often existed in a vacuum. Owned by local business magnates or as dynastic family heirlooms, clubs like Inter, AC Milan, Juventus and Napoli have been at the epicentre of their communities, as local guardians of tradition and part of a common enterprise, a shared social capital.
This has been beneficial for some clubs (the Agnelli family treasure Juventus as both an asset and a privilege) and disastrous for others (Lecce, now of Serie C, under the guidance of Giovanni Semeraro). With many people involved in Italian football calling for change, for modernisation, for the game to embrace globalisation, it now seems that this may very well come through via foreign ownership.
Foreign ownership is not a new phenomenon across Europe’s top divisions. 65% of clubs in the English Premier League are owned or partly owned through foreign financing. Last season’s French Ligue 1 champions and runners up, Paris Saint-Germain and Monaco respectively, are both backed by by wealthy foreign investors. In both the USA and Australia, Manchester City’s Middle Eastern money has spawned two sister clubs in Melbourne City and New York City. Until recently Italy appeared off limits to overseas finance. Now, with Roma, Inter and Bologna under foreign ownership, Italy appears to be finally opening up.
Italian football is desperate for investment. Not since Italia 90 has large scale investment been ploughed into the infrastructure of the sport, which led to a golden age of calcio in the 1990s. The failed bid for the EUROs in 2016 now means that Italy have less of an incentive to renew stadiums or redevelop municipal areas around the grounds. Italian clubs now have to look at other revenue streams in order to modernise and the answer could likely come from abroad.
With foreign owners like Erick Thohir (Inter) and the shareholder group of Thomas DiBenedetto, James Pallotta and Michael Ruane (Roma) looking to build new stadiums, increase TV revenues and build up large overseas fan bases, the future of these clubs augurs good things. Since losing a Champions League place and its locomotive clubs that could be more competitive with Europe’s elite, Italy opening itself up to new ideas and methods (i.e. foreign ownership) can only be beneficial for Serie A not to be left behind.
The danger however is that foreign investment will expect a return from it’s outlay. Inter themselves have just announced loses of €103 million during the 2013/14 season. For Thohir, who also owns stakes in DC United and Persib Bandung in MLS and the Indonesian Super League respectively, a five-year plan should see Inter turn this debt around and fully comply with UEFA Financial Fair Play rules — as well as generate a profit.
There lies the incongruence with current Serie A owners. The majority of Serie A clubs are Italian-owned and rarely operate at a profit. The likes of Massimo Ferrero at Sampdoria and Urbano Cairo of Torino run their clubs for love, not money. Indeed the danger comes when foreign owners no longer see the profitability in their clubs anymore.
Roma’s plans for a new super stadium on the banks of the river Tiber, based on the Colosseum and boasting of a hall of fame, training facilities and education facilities for the local community are impressive and admirable. The danger comes when the vision off the pitch can not be translated into reality by the results on it. Huge modernist stadiums can quickly become the headstones of a forgotten billionaire’s play-thing. Hopefully that won’t be the case in Serie A.
Follow Simon Campbell on Twitter at: @geordiegazzetta
