Sport, business, politics. Milan of Silvio Berlusconi

di Francesco Bonini
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 27 (2008), p. 107

In 1986 the business man Silvio Berlusconi buys the soccer team Milan A.C. The peculiar and emblematic new updated identity of the club, even if always mentioned in the company communication, is not linked to any kind of organized structure, but its development is characterized by the insertion of the club in the Berlusconi group of societies and follows the political and industrial complex path that this man has traced. In 20 years time Berlusconi succeeded in completely identifying the football team with his industrial activity and even with himself. The culminating event of this process happens in 1994, with his entrance in the political field: we can now say that this new circuit sport-industry-society-politics characterizing the Berlusconian Milan, is a new form of marketing that can be defined meta-sponsorizzation. The Milan story brings the problem of the governance of the sport system, to be matched with the actual improvements of rules in Italy and Europe.