The Organization and Economics of Italian Top Football

Football is the most popular sport in Italy, with more than 44 million Italians interested in the game, 31 million who support a particular team, 9 million who regularly watch matches at stadiums, 20 million who read about football in newspapers and 25 million who follow football on television or radio. It has been estimated that football generates an aggregate revenue amounting to 4,200 m. As a matter of fact, the organization of football in Italy is a sensitive issue, which very often attracted prolonged attention and debate. Moreover, in Italy football is also often interpreted as an element of national pride and identity. The national team had won four times the World Cup (second only to Brazil) and the Italian teams are second only to Spanish teams if considering the number of European cups won, and first if considering only the Champions leagues. In some cases, it could be argued that this great popularity has gradually become an excuse used to motivate and justify some exceptions to ordinary rules. Football teams for example have had a very favourable application of the fiscal regulation. The popularity of the game lies behind possible slippage of the authorities toleration of financial misconduct when it concerns football clubs rather than ordinary firms operating in other fields and businesses. Secondly, the authorities seemed to have a different attitude towards football-related hooliganism in comparison to riots occurring on other occasions which cause similar incidents. This chapter will analyse the organization of Italian Serie A and its economic aspects. Then, we will review the evolution of the financial situation in professional Italian football and then attempt to depict what we feel are the main causes of evident under-performance, which threatened to turn into a full-blown crisis. Moreover we will depict the evolution of management of most important source of funding for Italian football, namely the TV rights.