International programs

From the 30th of October to 6th of November students and partners of “Sport Industry Management” RMA program had taken part in an internship program titled “Football Business of North Italy & South France”. Group visited Turin, Milan, Monaco and Nice. The program included: workshops and seminars from top managers of the clubs, visiting the stadiums and football matches, training centers and youth football academies with a detailed study of the infrastructure.

Cities: Turin, Milan, Monte Carlo, Nice.

Football Clubs: Juventus Football Club S. P. A. (Juventus FC), Associazione Calcio Milan (AC Milan), Association Sportive de Monaco Football Club (AS Monaco FC).

Stadiums: Juventus Stadium (Juventus FC), Stadio Giuseppe Meazza (AС Milan), Louis II Stadium (AS Monaco FC), Allianz Riviera (OGC Nice).

Speakers: Francesco Gianello (Head of Stadium, Juventus FC), Stefano Braghin (Head of Academy, Juventus FC), Giorgio Ricci (Head of Global Partnership and Corporate Revenues, Juventus FC), Vadim Vasilyev (Vice-President, CEO, AS Monaco), Filips Dhondt (General Director, AS Monaco), Félicien Laborde (Directeur Exploitation: infrastructures, organization, development, projeсts, IT, security, AS Monaco), Marco Amato (Head of Headquarters Casa Milan, AC Milan), Filippo Galli (Head Of Academy, AC Milan).

Topics of workshops and seminars: commercial and transfer activities of professional sports clubs, marketing strategies, work with the fans (loyalty programs), broadcast rights, budgeting, merchandising, organization of the youth academies, etc.

Francesco Gianello on the organization of the club museum at the Juventus Stadium: “We have several suggestions for those who want to visit our museum. There is a standard stadium & museum tour about an hour — an hour and ten minutes duration, a ticket costs from 18 to 22 euros, and it`s free for the children under 6 years old.

There is a tour which is a little more expensive, from 28 to 35 euros per person, but at the same time it`s exclusive. Some various bonuses granted to those who buy it, and one of the main ones is that a person can touch all the exhibits in the museum. For example you can touch Del Piero`s T-shirt, hold Buffon`s gloves, real medals, cups, take a picture with them.

Another suggestion is a city bus tour, ticket price from 20 to 25 euros. It starts from the stadium and lasts about three hours. You sit and ride with the guide.

You are driving along a special designed route and the guide is telling you: the founding fathers met here for the first time, here was the first headquarter of Juventus, here is our first stadium Motoveldromo and then through all urban places related the club`s history.”

Filips Dhondt on the organization of the Monaco club`s office: “We have 240 people at the moment including all contracted football players. We have a president, vice president & general director at the same time. There is a board of chairman which consists of nine people — they meet four times a year, offer a budget and determine the general directions of development.

Operational management is running by the CEO and the heads of departments: they meet every week on Mondays. Attendance at this event is absolutely necessary for them but ordinary employees can also attend it if they want. Anyway, we print out the report of each meeting and everyone can read it. Any employee can express his observations, thoughts regarding some problems, regarding what is going wrong in the club.

I can give you a very recent example of this kind of communication between ordinary employees and managers: after one of the trips one of our drivers Amir came to the technical director and said: ‘You know what, this player doesn’t look good, some kind of sad. Maybe something happened... Pay attention and sort it out ...’

Well I think it`s a very proper point of view, because the quality of the game depends on how the player feels, in what kind of mood he is, what he is concerned and upset about. We pay very serious attention to this. We try to solve all problems of football players (the legionnaires particularly), their relatives, their families, that they have outside the field. If the player even brought a cat we must make sure that the cat is happy in Monaco.”