Italian professional football lost 3.6 billion euros between 2019 and 2022 due to Covid and pandemic-related restrictions, according to an annual report.
According to the 2023 edition of ReportCalcio published Thursday evening by the Italian Federation, the Italian 1st, 2nd and 3rd Division Championships lost an average of 1.2 billion euros per year during the Covid period, while their cumulative losses were of EUR 412m in 2018-19, before the pandemic.
Losses for the 2021-22 season alone, the last season considered for this 2023 report, amounted to EUR 1.4 billion, “the worst ever recorded since this report was first published fifteen years ago”. The indebtedness of Italian professional football reached EUR 5.6 billion in 2021-22 (4.4% over one year). These figures, notes Federico Mussi, of the PwC firm, recall “the structural weaknesses of this sector”.
“We have been drawing attention for several years to the need for professional clubs to adopt virtuous systems and models to align expenditure with their ability to generate revenue,” he continues.
In this regard, to increase ticketing revenue by modernizing a fleet of stadiums that are notoriously dated and no longer meet current needs, the joint candidacy with Turkey to organize Euro-2032 represents “a unique opportunity”, note the authors of this report.
Ticketing revenue for all Italian professional football thus stood at EUR 254 million in 2021-22, compared to EUR 226 million a year earlier, but still far from the EUR 341 million of 2018-19, the last season before the pandemic.
For example, Manchester United alone generated EUR 126 million in ticketing revenue in 2021-22, according to the Deloitte report.
