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Extended Clip - Serie A Disastrous TV Deal: Why Are Italians So Bad At Marketing?
1.5k Plays1 year ago
After the domestic Serie A TV deal talks hit a big stumbling point leading to Italian FA President Gabriele Gravina dropping an embarassing car crash TV interview, Nima Tavallaey and Carlo Garganese discuss, analyze and contextualize the reasons behind the dreadful Serie A TV deals.
This is an extended clip from this weeks free Monday episode of The Italian Football Podcast which is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google podcasts.
To listen to ALL complete episodes of The Italian Football Podcast, go to Patreon.com/TIFP and become a Patron for only $2.99 USD per month (excluding VAT).
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Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
to the Italian football podcast. Well,
Critiquing Italian Football Leadership
00:00:06
Speaker
that brings us on nicely to the TV deal because Gravina, the FIGC president, gave the biggest car crash interview I've seen for a long time. And it just sums up everything that we've said in this podcast for the last three years about how clueless these people are and how they just... The
Why Can't Italian Football Sell Itself?
00:00:24
Speaker
simplest way of saying this is they just don't get it.
00:00:29
Speaker
they just do not get and understand how to sell a product you know selling life jackets on the titanic you know it's halleons are so bad at marketing it's i can say that because my parents are italian i can say that i don't care if you call me.
00:00:46
Speaker
stereotypical Italian people in Italy cannot sell anything. They haven't got a clue. They are absolutely clueless. I disagree with that.
Leadership Failures in Italian Football
00:00:55
Speaker
I disagree with that because Italian food sells itself, sells itself, Italian fashion, Italian music, all of these things sell, but Italian football is the thing that has problems monetizing. That's because the people in charge of Italian football are
00:01:11
Speaker
corrupt, incompetent, and archaic in how they run things. Those things sell themselves. Italian food, Italian... Why doesn't Italian football sell itself? It's dead in the 90s because it had all the best players in the world. Now it doesn't have the best players in the world. Well, this is what I'm saying. The people in charge of what else is the issue. Not because of how they were selling it. It wasn't because of how they were selling it. It had all the best players in the world. It was nothing to do with marketing. It was just that now they haven't got a clue how to market.
00:01:40
Speaker
No, I think it's an Italian football problem more than anything else. I think Italian football is run by incompetent, corrupt people who have an archaic mindset, and the footballing world is so
00:01:57
Speaker
The competition is so fierce that if you're not top of your game, you don't succeed. That's the overall arching generalization that you can make on Italian football. His comment,
Gravina's Misguided Comments
00:02:13
Speaker
I have to read it out, it is so clueless. It's clear that the offer must also be directly proportional to the quality of the product that is placed on the market.
00:02:22
Speaker
We all thought, perhaps we were a little deluded, that the results of the Italian teams would give them an appeal. But the question we must ask ourselves about Made in Italy, which Italy has because it has a force engraved in history, is whether the quality of the product we offer is right. On this, we probably need to reflect on a much broader and much more complex project. No shit, Sherlock.
00:02:47
Speaker
That's my only reaction to that. No shit share a lot. You thought Fiorentina reaching the conference league, Inter reaching the Champions League and Roma reaching the Europa League was... Because this is exactly what I'm saying. This is the way that they've always been. They think that the league will sell itself. They think that just because they've had three teams in the final, that automatically, that by the way, all of a sudden, the league, the TV deal was going to double just because they've got three teams in the final. I mean, it doesn't work like that.
Missed Opportunities in Italian Football
00:03:15
Speaker
It doesn't work like that you have arcade stadiums that are not fit for purpose you don't know how to market your league you put your marketing eggs in the wrong basket time and time and time again.
00:03:31
Speaker
from North America to the Middle East, North Africa, to Europe, to everywhere. You had a genius chance, a brilliant chance. You literally won the lottery when the CDC deal came before they went to Spain. You turned that down because you were too greedy and you couldn't look past your own nose. Now you're wondering why everything's going tits up.
Nepotism in Social Media Hiring
00:03:53
Speaker
You have a social media team that run the social media who
00:04:00
Speaker
speak English, like my... Borat. Borat English. Borat. It's Borat English. No, no, it's Borat English. It's literally Borat English. The stat overload, that doesn't mean anything. I was going to say like my grandma... What was the average apex height?
00:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I mean, they still use that three years on and no one's corrected it. I was gonna compare it to my grandparents who were in Italy, sorry, were in England. They moved over to Italy, moved into England in the 1950s and they were here for
00:04:35
Speaker
40 to 50 to 60 years and they're all passed away now and in that time between them they probably learned about 10 English words and they would do a better job on social media selling the Selya than these clowns. This is what I mean about the corruption. Look at the people they've hired to run these things. It's not based on
00:05:00
Speaker
It's not like there are people in italy who are competent of
Connections Over Competence
00:05:03
Speaker
course they don't know the problem is that they won't even realize it's a problem they won't look at their social media feed and think to themselves oh wait hang on a minute.
00:05:15
Speaker
we're not doing a very good job there. They think they're doing a good job. This is exactly what I mean. The reason for that is because the wrong people are hired because they're hired on basis of whose uncle or son or daughter or niece and nephew they are.
00:05:32
Speaker
or who they know as opposed to what they know and what they can do. That's true, but at the same time, they cannot recognise because they don't understand marketing. They cannot recognise what is a good marketing campaign, how you're supposed to sell, even as simple as how you put out a tweet or how you put out a Facebook post. Do not get it at all.
00:05:53
Speaker
And just, I mean, you could go on and on and on. I was speaking to somebody that's in the media that was telling me how they're going big about trying to sell Serie A in North America at the moment. And they're making all these investments to try and build Serie A in North America.
00:06:08
Speaker
And then what did the Serie A then decide to do? They
Scheduling Conflicts with Expansion Goals
00:06:14
Speaker
decide to make an announcement that Juventus are going to be playing many, many more games next season at Harper's 12 in the midday game, the 12.30 game. 11.30am in the U.Q. list. So that's like 5.30am? 6.30am East Coast.
00:06:37
Speaker
and so what time would that be in the other side of the country? I mean, you know, you are by far the most popular Serie A team. You want to break North America, right? You spend all this supposed investment, you'll boast, and these people, these execs, I've been told, are boasting about what an amazing job they're doing at growing the league out in North America and growing the league around the world.
00:07:00
Speaker
Which is a load of nonsense, by the way. And then they go and make the decision to put the games at a time when the people in North America are literally just two hours into their sleep from a night out. So it's like, you just have to laugh. You just have to laugh for them. This is what I mean. It's like they're clueless.
00:07:22
Speaker
completely clueless. And I mean, this is simple stuff as well. I mean, this is stuff like, honestly, I think this is something like the 12 year old me would would get, you know, and I'm thinking, you know, they're not getting it. And these guys, they don't have a clue. They don't have a clue.
TV Deal Failures and Technical Issues
00:07:40
Speaker
And it's
00:07:41
Speaker
And that's the reason for this domestic TV deal, which if you listen to our show last week, we discussed about this and what a disaster this is about the gap in TV revenue being absolutely astronomical in terms of overseas TV deals, which we've known about for a long time between the Serie A and the Premier League.
00:08:02
Speaker
and the other leagues actually, the other top five leagues. Now we're seeing that the domestic TV deals in Serie A are a complete disaster as well. And they had been okay. They'd been comparable to all of the leagues and actually not that far, but still quite far behind. I think it was 900 million to get it right this time. 900 million was the last one. And that was compared to I think about 1.8, 1.9.
00:08:27
Speaker
billion in the Premier League. And now in the first bid, I think it got to about 500 million. So it's a total disaster. It's a total disaster. And also the fact that they gave it to Dazon, who have run an app that doesn't work. I mean, it's ridiculous. And internet connectivity in that country is an issue.
00:08:56
Speaker
And these are government problems. No, it is what it is. Unfortunately, the football is beautiful, but the people who run it are grossly incompetent and care only about their paydays. And that's
Could Foreign Management Save Serie A?
00:09:09
Speaker
why nothing will change until everything goes to hell. Because that's how it works in Italy. Things have to go so badly pear-shaped before any change. Do you know what I think, Nima? I think that the only way
00:09:23
Speaker
that this area ever gets saved in terms of, from a marketing point of view, I mean, this is only one of many things, is bringing in some people from England to run it. I honestly think, we sit here and we're critical about the privilege. I've said for years that this is why I want more North American owners.
00:09:44
Speaker
English or Americans, but I think English would be better because English understands football culture better than Americans understand. Americans understand marketing, they understand the numbers and the spreadsheets, but they don't understand the culture of football as well as the English do.
00:10:02
Speaker
No, I think you need a majority of foreign owners in the Serie A, so they can, first of all, agree on a president, so they can agree on having a structure and then vote that way through so that we can have some order in this league.
Advocating for Foreign Ownership
00:10:15
Speaker
Because at this point, the people there are just, they don't care. It's about lining them up. Just hire a team of English people to market the league. Simple as that, because they get it. They understand how to do it.
00:10:30
Speaker
Italians, I've got no faith in Italians ever being able to do it. Just do not get it. And everybody that I speak to that are in Italy, have worked in the league, that have come from outside Italy originally, they all say the same thing. And then you know that because we've spoken about it as well. They all say exactly the same thing. They just do not get it at all.
00:10:52
Speaker
I'm speaking to Adrian Del Monte who works for, you know, he says exactly the same thing. He just sometimes, he just finds it unbelievable sometimes.