Serie A has trailed other leagues in terms of
stadium attendance and viewership for much too long. They keep claiming they want to rebuild
Serie A and increase attendance and viewership. Yet they do nothing to make
that happen. Or even worse, they specifically keep doing the same things they’ve
always done, expecting different results. But what they don’t see is the impact
their terrible business practices have on fans, especially fans worldwide. By
making it more difficult to attend games or view the games on TV or via
streaming, they seem surprised that fewer people are actually watching calcio.
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| How do you increase viewership if you limit who can watch? |
While stadium attendance was great on the
last day of the season, setting a record for attendance on the final
matchday in eight seasons, overall Serie A attendance throughout the season is
still much
lower than other European leagues. The average attendance per game was
24,693. Serie A still languish in fourth place amongst the top five leagues
when it comes to watching games in the stadium. The Bundesliga tops the list
with an average of 44,646 people attending each match, while the Premier League
takes second with an average of 38, 297. The league has done little to help
teams overcome the difficult bureaucracy to be able to own their own stadia.
And despite efforts to clean up the environment and invite more families and
children to the matches, the numbers still languish. Additionally, they have
changed the scheduling of matches, reportedly to appeal to a worldwide
television audience. Only those changes have impacted stadium attendance
negatively, because they make it more difficult for fans to get to the games at
the earlier times.
Appealing to the television audience is ironic. Within Italy, there was a bid accepted from
Mediapro for all of the TV rights for the country. They outbid Sky and
Mediaset, who had the rights this past season. However courts blocked the bid
due to antitrust law, with an appeal scheduled for June seventh. And yesterday, the league
voted unanimously to block the bid, even though the bid from Sky and
Mediaset was considerably lower. I don’t know everything about the deals, but I
do know that Sky and Mediaset put a lot of effort into getting the antitrust
ruling. More effort than they put into making sure that all Italians can watch
the games. I don’t know if Mediapro could have delivered on their promises, but
if so, they would have made all of the games far more accessible to fans in
Italy. Such a shame that Serie A are so stuck in their ways that they cannot even
try to move forward and allow more fans to watch. Especially when you consider
that despite a more exciting Serie A season this past year, TV viewership in
Italy was actually down 3% overall. But hey, why get more money and allow more
fans to watch when you can keep doing the same thing?
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| How do you fill a stadium if you are catering to a worldwide TV audience that you cut off? |
While Serie A watch their domestic TV rights monies very
closely, even if they still make poor choices, their international TV rights
deals are severely neglected. Sure, this year, they decided to crack down on
illegal streaming of Serie A games. They were hyper-vigilant about shutting down
streams right away. But allowing international fans legal access to the games
is not a priority. Despite a new deal with IMG for the international rights that at least brought them a little more money,
there is no promise whatsoever that worldwide fans will have any more access to
Serie A games legally. And if they continue to block all illegal streaming of
the games, then international fans literally have no way to watch the games at
all. Well done, Serie A.
For a league that perpetually whines about not having the
revenue, attendance, and viewership of other leagues, they are consistently
unwilling to make the changes necessary to be competitive. Instead of allowing
more fans to come to the games, they changed the times of the games to make it
more inconvenient for people to attend. When offered a more lucrative domestic
television rights deal that also promised to make the games more available to
Italian fans, the league said no. They took the money from an increased bid for
international television rights, but without making sure that the games would
be more accessible to fans worldwide. Instead they focused on blocking illegal
streaming, which had no financial impact on their international television
rights deal. The only impact their actions had was preventing more fans from
watching. So if they are doing everything to keep fans from watching,
whether at the stadium, at home, or abroad, then who do they expect to be left
watching calcio?
This post inspired by the music of Bad
Religion’s “Television”