As is well known by lovers of the game, football is by far the most popular sport in Italy. Individuals of both sexes and of every social class are daily engrossed by even the most trivial news concerning the club they support or the professional leagues as a whole. Newspapers and television programmes entirely dedicated to football increase every season, but the economic performance of the whole business has peaked in the past couple of years.
Notwithstanding the popularity of the sport and the fact that the bigger clubs have diversified their sources of revenue (merchandising, dedicated TV channels etc) – and a small number have also been listed on the National Stock Exchange – the whole football system is facing a severe financial crisis. The majority of the professional clubs consistently show losses in their financial statements and the risk of insolvency, previously existing only among clubs of the lower divisions, is now looming before most of them.
