Abstract
This chapter examines supporters’ efforts to gain a role in the governance of their football clubs in Italy. With very few exceptions, all Italian supporters’ trusts concern clubs currently playing in the lower levels of the Italian professional or semi-professional football hierarchy. Their participation in the governance process is extremely modest in all cases and, except in a very few cases, does not involve ownership. The chapter concludes that unless supporters’ organisations become majority owners of their club - a difficult task at best, at least in the professional leagues - they are likely to fade away as the initial enthusiasm of most of their members recedes under the weight of the tasks that any voluntary organisation requires.
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Notes
- 1.
I wish to thank Stefano Pagnozzi who works for Supporters in Campo and maintains the blog www.infoazionariatopopolarecalcio.blogspot.it. In addition to providing me with valuable suggestions he has also been instrumental in helping me update to 30 March 2016 Table 5.1 in the text. Thanks also go to Riccardo Bertolin of My Roma and my fellow Samb supporters Nazzareno Perotti, Guido Barra, Fabrizio Roncarolo and Ennio D’Angelo and Gianni D’Angelo for providing me with inside information about the two Samb supporters’ organisations.
- 2.
This survey examines only the top four levels of the Italian football hierarchy: The professional Serie A, Serie B and Lega Pro, and the officially amateur, but in reality semi-professional, Serie D. The reason for excluding the lower amateur levels (Eccellenza, Promozione, first, second, and third categories) is that supporters’ organisations wishing to acquire a role in the management or ownership of their reference clubs face very different challenges depending on the level at which their club plays. In January 2016, for instance, Il Fasano siamo Noi, took control of U.S. Città di Fasano, a club playing at the Promozione level, after the owner voluntarily relinquished control of the club to the supporters’ organisation (Lagalante, 2016). Such voluntary, and free, transfer is simply unimaginable for what concerns clubs playing at the Serie A or even Serie B level.
- 3.
For an analysis of the English experience in its early years, see Hamil et al. (2000).
- 4.
The bankruptcy was due to frauds committed by the club owner A. Venturato. His trial for bankruptcy fraud lasted until December 2009. He was sentenced to a three-year prison term.
- 5.
On 10 April 2016 as this chapter was undergoing its last revision, Samb beat Jesina 2–1 at home and gained mathematical certainty of its promotion to Lega Pro for the 2016–17 season.
- 6.
The support of the fishermen is also mentioned in a brief video available on YouTube documenting one of the last Samb home games in Serie C against Lecco in 1956: A San Benedetto pesci e pallone’ (In San Benedetto fish and football), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHJjC17TEx4, accessed 30 March 2016).
- 7.
On the importance of keeping good relations between football clubs and local government authorities, see Perkins (2000).
- 8.
This is, for instance the position taken by Stefano Pagnozzi of Supporters in Campo (Email communication of 2 April 2016).
- 9.
As this book goes to press (March 2017), a couple of new developments deserve a mention. In October 2016, as a result of economic difficulties, Sosteniamolancona, in a move that replicated the experience of Taras 706 in Taranto, passed control of the club to three new investors who now own 98% of the shares of the club. In San Benedetto del Tronto, Noi Samb seems to have entirely abandoned its ambition to participate in the governance of the club. Its membership has drastically declined and its website only publishes stories on the Samb’s matches in the Lega Pro. To conclude, developments in the last year seem to have cast additional pessimism on the prognosis made in March 2016 (when this chapter was last revised) concerning the future of Supporters’ Trusts in Italy.
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List of Interviews
Interview 1. (2014). Interview with N. Perotti, President and founder of Tifosi Pro-Samb, 15 April.
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Croci, O. (2017). Football Supporters’ Trusts in Italy: A Horizontal Survey and the Case of Sambenedettese. In: García, B., Zheng, J. (eds) Football and Supporter Activism in Europe. Football Research in an Enlarged Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48734-2_5
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