Italian Supercoppa: Marketing the game in Asia

The Italian season gets down to serious business this weekend when champions Juventus play Lazio in the Supercoppa, the Italian equivalent of English football’s Community Shield.

Arguably the most intriguing aspect of this game, however, is not the high profile nature of the two contestants but rather the fact that it will be played in Shanghai, China.

Two weeks ago when the two Milan giants, AC Milan and Inter Milan, met in Shenzhen, some 38,000 fans turned up for one of those relatively meaningless pre-season friendlies where both sides substituted all 11 start-up players. For the record, AC Milan won the game 1-0 but a much more significant aspect of the match was the fan enthusiasm.

Much to their delight, our Italian colleagues reported with some amazement that not only were the fans wearing Inter and AC Milan shirts but also that many of them broke into the classic Italian fan chant of the type, “Chi Non Salta, Rossonero E” (Whoever is not jumping up and down is clearly a Milan fan).

This weekend, Italian football gets a further chance to put its goods on show in front of a seemingly appreciative audience. Nor is the Supercoppa merely about prestige promotion since it is the result of a three-year deal between the Italian Lega (Football League) and the Chinese authorities which reportedly guarantees a €3 million euro box-office to the Italian clubs.

Nor is this anything new for Italian football. Since 1993, the Supercoppa has been played outside of Italy on seven occasions, in places as diverse as New York and Washington, Tripoli in Libya as well as three times in Bejing and last year in Doha.

Given its often negative international image – racism, match-fixing and violent fan behaviour for starters – the Supercoppa represents a welcome feelgood moment for Italian football. Then too, as Inter Milan’s Indonesian owner Erick Thohir recently pointed out, China, with its 1.3 billion population, is the reference point for the Asian football market.

When Lazio turned up to train close by the Shanghai stadium this week, they discovered for themselves that their presence had not gone unnoticed. Halfway through their behind closed doors session, the Lazio players were interrupted by a drone, complete with TV camera. Immediately, they wondered if the drone had been sent in on a spying mission by Juventus. In reality, the drone was the property of an enthusiast football fan keen to get some close-up shots of the Italian stars. The enthusiastic fan was kindly asked to recall his drone to base.

Lest that little incident left a bad taste, Lazio earned themselves some good PR when, at the end of the session, three of the team stars – Brazilian Felipe Anderson, Senegalese Diao Keita and midsummer signing, former Ajax player, Riccardo Kishna – stayed on the pitch for a little kick-around with children from a local youth club.

As for the football, this is not an unimportant game. Last season, Lazio lost three times to Old Lady Juventus in both league and cup. Undoubtedly, however, the defeat which hurt the most came in last May’s Italian Cup Final at the Olympic Stadium in Rome. Lazio lost 2-1 in a game in which they gave as good as they got and in which they hit the post through Serbian striker Filip Djordjevic when the score was 1-1:

“To have won the Cup last season would have been a first for many of us and it would have left us something tangible at the end of a great season”, Lazio’s Antonio Candreva told Gazzetta Dello Sport earlier this week, adding: “Let’s hope things go better this time.”