Discovering the evolution of «Udinese Business model»
Udinese Calcio is one of the most ancient football club in Italy, born in 1896. It plays since its born, in Udine, a city in North-Eastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, with a population of 100,000 inhabitants. It has a large number of fans in Friuli and surrounding areas.
Despite of its ancient foundation, the most important period for the Club has been the last 32 years, since the Pozzo family has become owner of the Club, working on their business model, which consists on buy young talents worldwide and sell them to the big clubs after the players achievement of great performances in the club, that brought Udinese to the élite of continental football and also to 25 consecutive years in Serie A as well as many participations to European Cups (in 2005/06 was promoted to the group stage of the UEFA Champions League).
(Alexis Sanchez was bought from Cobreloa in 2006 and sold to Barcelona on 2011 for about 30 million euros)
The Brand “Udinese Calcio” for many years has meant young talents, but also innovation, planning and both sportive and financial results, that brought a good image to the club.
As a confirmation of that, Udinese Calcio decided to build a new stadium (or better, to renovate its old «Stadio Friuli») and it gave the Club the opportunity to change its perspectives and to start a new business model in terms of activities, stakeholders engagement and revenues increasing.
(Dacia Arena)
At this moment, the club is working on the attachment of its fans, so that they think of Dacia Arena as their “Home”. That’s why the passion and engagement increase.
The new Stadium was built in order to make fans find reasons to come there not only on matchdays but also during the week. For that reason, the Stadium must be open to all the targets to make a stronger attachment, more activities day by day, and the club focus on different stakeholders as not only Udinese fans, but also families, youngs, university students, Udinese Academy teams, International Fans and tourists, and also new commercial areas users (for example on the south stand of the stadium there are CONI’s offices, and on the north one there’s the Macron Store, and are still in project some activities).
The stadium increases the opportunity to create a relation with different both national and local companies (B2B), like sponsor, hospitality and bartering partners, in order to connect them with the others and also with fans, creating values and avantages for both parts.
What the club saw was that the stadium is necessary but not sufficient to bring there more people. That’s the reason why Udinese applies an important marketing strategy which consists on increasing the attendance satisfying primary and secondary needs, for example guaranteeing a nice view from the stands, and a roof which covers the entire stadium, but also an easy access through the turntails and an important food&beverage quality etc.
Another strategy is making a good policy both on seasonal tickets considering the Serie A scenario, just think that the cheaper sector of the stadium costs about 200 euros, more than one-third less than the same sector in Allianz Stadium of Turin, and on matchday tickets.
These strategies have proved to be succesfull and Udinese increases seasonal tickets holders, but also tickets selling and matchday attendance, hospitality packages sold and lots of revenues coming from the bar. Furthermore, the club want to continue to be an innovative club, and that’s the reason why is working on the development of new projects whose could increase more and more the quality of the “fan experience”.
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