Michele Ciccarese (Commercial and Marketing Director for Lega Serie A), Diletta Leotta (Serie A Broadcaster for DAZN), Ughetta Ercolano (Senior Vice President of Content Southern Europe, DAZN Group)
Host: Cindy Marina
One of the biggest football leagues in the world, Italy’s Serie A continues to thrive – remaining the home of some of the world’s most famous teams and players and passionate fans. How does an iconic league grow and embrace the future while maintaining its traditions so beloved by its fans? That’s a question facing leagues in sports around the world – and many are looking at Serie A’s formula of success.
When talking about the challenges of managing the league in the new digital age, while also maintaining the old values and integrity, Ciccarese says they are careful with choosing partners to align with in order to make Serie A fresher, more innovative and entertaining and technologically, at the key of their strategy. “Technology Is at the center of what we do. For the last 50 years, we have been focusing too much on the domestic market. We just opened an office in New York, in the Middle East and hopefully an office soon in Croatia.”
With 8.2 Million followers on Instagram, Diletta Leotta says her dream was always to be a soccer broadcaster. To highlight how important football is in Italy, Leotta shared a story. “I remember at the last game of this season in Milano, there was a group managers, lawyers, politicians all on the screen jumping up and down like a child on Christmas Day, and maybe this is the power of football. You stand up for who you believe it, what you believe in. it’s like second religion there, they feel it in their heart.”
Ercolano says there is still a lot to do, in Serie A and sports, in unlocking the potential direct knowledge in terms of product. Product goes together with content, so we always need to produce new materials, new talent and new ideas. We need to be pioneers of new ways of telling stories with new ways of presenting it to our customers.”
She adds “We need to own more social media personalities in our service because basically, social media gets us closer to that one younger base. We need to be open, more inclusive with our audiences and get them more involved. The biggest challenge was when we launched in Italy, in 2018. It’s a big, changing sport not just in Italy but the entire world.”
