Floridi, ‘Business growth opportunities and attention to the new generations’
The revolution that the FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants to implement with the biennial World Cup is a big question mark in this historical moment of world football. The debate, however, hides political and economic contrasts between Fifa and Uefa and beyond. According to Emanuele Floridi, consultant for football, media and telecommunications, waiting for the showdown in the coming months and the proposal will be voted (rejected or accepted?) In Zurich, we must make a premise: “for years we have been witnessing a different speed of growth and change between FIFA, Uefa and the individual federations. And then we in Italy and in Europe are already saturating the offer of the football product while elsewhere there is a hunger for the ball and the possibility of investments and growth. We are worn out, in large part of the rest of the world we are not ”, Floridi underlines to Giovanni Capuano of Radio24 and published by Panorama. “It is a political war between two entities, with Uefa now bigger than its parent company. That’s why it would be a great opportunity to double the World Cup and more, because it would also apply to the European Championship or the Copa America. It is a question of occupying spaces that otherwise remain free and are destined to be occupied by others “.
An example is that of tennis. “Look what the ATP did that invented the Finals to take part of the calendar before it was discovered. Even in the football calendar, we can and must intervene. It is clear to everyone that the current system of international stops is tiring and not very productive. They are the same clubs that can first earn from the two-year World Cup and from a new organization. The sports sponsorship and entertainment industry would have a great advantage in knowing that there is certain programming and it repeats itself, with no downtime ”. In this way “the value would change and the subdivision system will also have to change, with a new model and a new mechanism with a much larger pie”.
A principle that moved the creators of the Superlega. “The idea itself was not and is not wrong, the way and the time in which it was proposed was wrong. Taking away the sporting merit, for example, was an own goal ”, explains the expert. “This time Fifa is doing the opposite reasoning with respect to what Blatter attempted in Africa or North America. First it sows and then it will try to harvest, trying to make large geographical areas places where football can become a prevalent sport, which at the moment it is not, with the risk that this last opportunity will be lost, especially towards the new generations who now have very different transversal interests and very distant from football “.
The possibility therefore that Infantino succeeds in his intent there are: “I think he can do it also because there is a strong push from countries that have room for growth and in Europe the opposite front is not as compact as it seems”, continues Floridi. “Bringing the World Cup to a country means stimulating its growth and football, at the moment, has fewer negative signals than other major events in crisis such as the Olympics that no one wants to organize anymore for costs and benefits. For the World Cup no, there is hunger and space to move and innovate “.
Source-www.adnkronos.com