Lega Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo opened up about the plans to increase the marketability and attractiveness of the Italian topflight, revealing a new name and the fight against racism.
Italian football has found something of a resurgence in recent years, with four different winners in the last four consecutive seasons. This campaign, Italian teams reached the finals of all three European club competitions – Inter in the Champions League, Roma in the Europa League and Fiorentina in the Conference League.
After a decline in the post-Calciopoli era, Serie A is starting to reemerge as one of the more exciting leagues in European football, something De Siervo and Lega Serie A are hoping to push.
Speaking to AS, De Siervo first discussed the plans to grow the profile of Italian football and Serie A.
“We have begun the journey to recover our position in international leadership. We are creating a more interesting product, of higher quality. The actual match time is 66%, there is a 33% missing that needs to be more attractive, for example with the cameras that are used at the cinema.
“We compete against Netflix and Amazon for people’s free time. The success of our clubs is no coincidence, building such a good product brings more investors. Funds have started to deal with Italy because we are the league with the most potential, as we have been the best for decades.
“We have to improve the stadiums, but the beauty of our cities is unique. And then in the last four seasons four different teams have won the Scudetto, something that doesn’t happen in any other country.
“We have closed a €10m per season agreement with the government, our league abroad will be called Serie A Made in Italy. Serie A has begun the journey to regain international leadership.”
He touched on Serie A’s battle for popularity for the Spanish La Liga.
“La Liga began its journey of international growth 15 years ago. We are paying for this delay. Self-critically, I can say that when we were at the top we bet on the Italian public and ended up limiting ourselves.
“Today we have changed and we look at the Spanish model as a well-organised and functional system, even if we have different ideas. The race is on, it is a competition between two very friendly leagues. La Liga is a tournament with which we have more relations.”
The Lega Serie A CEO spoke about the importance of TV rights and revenues.
“Our target for the next course is a figure between €1150m and €1380m euros, while for the foreign one Anna Guarnerio is working to increase from €250m to €400m.
“We have a €10m agreement with the government and thanks to Michele Ciccarese’s leadership our commercial earnings have increased from €30m to €70m in three years.
“Piracy costs us about €1 billion every three years. We finally got a law that we had been asking for 3 years. Parliament passed it unanimously. We have confidence in the new platform that can close IP addresses in half an hour.”
He discussed the league’s fight against racist abuse in stadiums.
“No tolerance. The 170 fans who insulted Lukaku will never again enter a stadium. This is something we had already done and will continue to do. It is an issue of global education, of culture. It’s a long journey.”
Finally, De Siervo discussed Juventus’ legal battles this season.
“Ideally the sentences should always come at the end of the season, something that would also help the fans a lot. But I would like to emphasise that in Italy football is constantly analysing itself and taking action.”