Rome, Aug 26, 2021 (AFP) - The coronavirus pandemic has caused revenues in Italian professional football to crash by one billion euros ($1.17 billion), according to a report released by the country's football federation on Thursday.
"Overall, during the first two seasons affected by Covid-19 (2019/20 and 2020/21), it is estimated that professional football lost around one billion euros in revenue," said ReportCalcio (Football Report) which was carried out by the FIGC with accounting firm PwC and research agency AREL.
The shortfall compounded football's already poor financial position before the pandemic hit Europe.
The report claimed the professional game's total losses more than doubled from 412 million euros as of the end of the 2018/19 financial year to 878 million euros a year later.
It also reports that the grassroots game has been hit hard, with a 23 percent drop in the number of FIGC-registered players between June 30, 2019, and March 15, 2021, to around 820,000, while around 27,000 jobs "generated by the football sector" have been lost.
The report attempts to show the importance of football to the Italian economy, claiming that the game contributed 10.1 billion euros to national GDP.
It also claims that heavy investment in the country's creaking stadium infrastructure would not only help boost the 300.9 million euros of ticket revenues generated by Serie A -- less than half that of England's Premier League -- but also generate 25,000 new jobs.