“If all Italian clubs owned their own stadiums, the income would change radically. Unfortunately, we are light years away from this change. What happened in Turin cannot be repeated.”

That was the verdict of Adriano Galliani ahead of the Rossoneri’s trip to face Juventus earlier this month. While the Old Lady of Italian football enjoys her new-found success and ponders over what to spend her riches on in the future, clubs across Italy are left to continue to bemoan the lack of revenue and atmosphere at their current homes.

The new Juventus Stadium holds 41,000 fans, and has already had a significant impact on the club’s finances. While the Bianconeri made just €1.2 million from the first three home games at their temporary residence at the Stadio Olimpico last season, the club have collected an impressive €4.2 million from the first three matches this campaign. Despite the money-men predicting that the club will bring home almost €27 million by the end of the season, that’s around €15 million more than in 2010/11, there is still a glaring issue that needs addressing in the Italian game. Surprisingly, it’s not all down to poor quality and invariably intimidating atmospheres.

While it simply can’t be argued that the benefits of an innovative and modernised stadium far outweigh the negative aspects of out-dated and perhaps unfit stadia scattered across the peninsula currently, for both the club and fans alike, there is still a situation within Calcio that prevents clubs from being able to maximise this potential.

“A club that changes its stadium also changes its crowd. Since the Allianz Arena in Munich was rebuilt, Bayern have been consistently sold out, because people are interested in the stadium and not just the match,” continued Galliani.

While Milan’s Vice-President is undoubtedly correct in his assessment of his German counterparts, there is still somewhat of an inconsistency when using this philosophy with Italian football. After the first three home games of the season, Juve have only sold out the stadium twice. One of which was the curtain-raiser for the new season against Parma on September 11, while tickets for the recent mouth-watering clash with Milan needed no sales pitch. Although it might have had many Milan fans clambering for a refund such was their disappointment after the game. However, sandwiched in between the two aforementioned clashes, was a type of game which represents, and potentially will continue to represent, a problem for the club.

Antonio Conte welcomed Bologna to Turin in Week 3, a 1-1 draw witnessed by just 25,679 spectators. That’s less than the 27,000 capacity at the Olimpico in Turin. Understandably, there are those who will argue that the stadium will significantly improve commercial income streams amongst others in addition to gate receipts. However, stadium old or new, using an old idiom, there still appears to be a problem of getting ‘bums on seats’ when considering that this was just the second competitive game at the brand new stadium.

Gazzetta dello Sport recently reported on the desperate failure of seducing your everyday Italian football fan on the street into the stadiums. Since 2008, season ticket sales have fallen by 20.4%, while television subscriptions have risen by 69%. The absence of rules limiting the transmission of live football in Italy sees every single Serie A and B game available live on television at affordable rates.

According to the ‘pink paper’, the most recent round of Serie A matches saw television viewers burst through the 10 million mark for the first time. While highlights are readily available on terrestrial television within an hour of the matches, it may not be so surprising that many followers of Calcio are more than happy to resort to staying within the comfort of their own homes to watch their teams in action as opposed to revelling in the match-day experience.

The numbers and facts provide a damning verdict in comparison to Calcio’s European rivals. Italy’s stadiums are on average only 61 per cent full, compared to 69 % in France, 73 % in Spain, 88 % in Germany and 92 % in England. Unquestionably, clubs in Italy are still wrapped in the nostalgia of the boom in the 90s, while countries around them have learnt from their previous failings and left the Italians behind. However, while many are quick to point to stadiums and perhaps the hooliganism aspect associated with them, as the only contributing factor for poor attendances, perhaps there is more to the impact that TV has had in a league that used to be renowned for the colourful, vibrant and exotic pictures from stands across the country.

Just last month, it was reported that the powers that be had accepted bids from both Sky Italia and Mediaset for live rights to Serie A. While Sky Italia will pay an average of $768 million per season over the next three years for rights to all 20 of the league’s teams, Mediaset will pay $367 million annually for just 12 sides. "We are satisfied," said Andrea Locatelli, vice-president of Infront Sports & Media, the Serie A's rights representative. "This income will provide stability for Italian football. We wanted to push ahead with the tender process because the television industry needs to plan in advance." While the television industry plans ahead and continues to exercise its media muscles, fans around Italy will continue to be flooded with football on their screens. Who’s the real winner here? More football = more television subscriptions = more money for the television industry while viewers around the world will continue to point out all those empty seats during the game.

Fans of Inter based in the UK won’t have to look too hard to find tickets for the club’s upcoming games at the San Siro being sold for no more than €10 on some respected online ticket-outlets. Yet the Nerazzurri could only convince 58,000 fans to attend the clash with Roma last month albeit in what was a troubled start to the season under former coach Gian Piero Gasperini. Of course, not to let down its adoring audience, Sky Calcio and Sky Sport Italia showed the match in all its live glory. City rivals Milan have fared worse, with their top attendance coming in at 50,000 despite having welcomed the likes of Lazio and Udinese to what is described on its website as ‘la Scala del calcio’. Based on the above attendance figures, ‘la York Hall del Calcio’ would arguably be more suitable.

However, never fear my Calcio lovers. Junior government minister Rocco Crimi has removed the blockade at the end of the tunnel by suggesting that a new law may well be passed within the next month which will facilitate the building of privately-owned football stadiums. "I'm very happy that the law relating to stadiums has been approved ... it's an important step," said Crimi.
"It will now pass into parliament and I hope that it will be quickly approved to give the country a framework that will allow sports societies to have modern, secure and efficient stadia." This will undoubtedly be music to the ears of the likes of Galliani who had resigned himself to considering modernisation improvements on the San Siro. However, will it be enough to persuade fans to leave their sofas and televisions behind and attend match-days on a regular basis?

For more of my ramblings on the latest Serie A and Juve news, you can find me on Twitter at @italiafooty