Italian football suffering financially: Report
Italian football lost 428 million euros last season, according to a report produced by the Italian Football Federation, alongside Pricewaterhousecoopers and Arel.
- Agence France-Presse
- Updated: March 29, 2012 07:59 PM IST
Italian football lost 428 million euros last season, according to a report produced by the Italian Football Federation, alongside Pricewaterhousecoopers and Arel.
It was an 80 million euros, or 23 percent, increase on the previous season's loss.
Only 19 of the 107 clubs across the top four divisions surveyed made a profit.
Football as a whole was in decline as it generated 2.5 billion euros, a 1.2 percent decrease on the previous campaign.
Serie A, unsurprisingly, accounted for the majority of that (82 percent) although that was 2 percent less than its share in 2009/2010.
Production costs increased by 1.5 percent to 2.9 million, which created the 428 million euro loss.
However, it was noted that the rate of increase in production costs reduced significantly from 6.8 percent in 2009/10 and 6.4 percent in 2008/09 to just 1.5 percent this time around.
Part of the increased loss can be explained by a drop in attendances of 4 percent across the four divisions.
There were 13.3 million people passing through the turnstiles in 2010/11.
The drops increase the lower the division, with Serie A seeing only a 2.4 percent reduction while the fourth division saw an almost 20 percent drop.
That resulted in a 22.4 million euro fall in gate receipts in professional football from 275.4 million euros to 253 million euros.
Gate receipts amount to only 10 percent of Italian clubs' revenue.
Stadiums were on average 56 percent full with the Champions League matches performing best at 67 percent of capacity, followed by Serie A with 59 percent.
Fourth division games recorded only 20 percent turnouts.