the territorial bond
"A healthy social life is found only,
when in the mirror of each soul
the whole community finds its reflection,
and when in the whole community
the virtues of each live.”
— Rudolf Steiner
No, don’t run away! This is not an editorial about soccer, or what we in Europe call football – our American friends will have to excuse us. If you don’t give a shit, you’re in the right place. Because that’s also what the chairman of Juventus Football Club stated early last January: "We recorded a 40% drop in audience in the 12 to 34 age bracket”. And please note that Agnelli is talking about Italy. Italy! Where football is stronger than religion. Allegedly. Still?
The pandemic didn’t help the trend: in February 2020 the Serie A (the main Italian league) was watched by 6,5 million viewers, after the first lockdown spectators collapsed to 4 million.
Let’s be clear, football is not only an Italian (or British, or French, or Brazilian or Argentinian) matter, it is the most widely played and followed sport worldwide; and a negative Italian indicator regards the global industry very directly.
According to a study carried out some time ago by McKinsey / Nielsen on a sample scattered between England, Spain, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and India, 27% of children aged 16 to 24 said they had no interest in football (13% even say they hate it). But there is another fact that risks changing, and quite a lot, the future of this sport. Only 49% of the kids, in fact, replied to follow football to "cheer", while 32% said they follow this sport because they are interested in a specific player (and only watch the big games). The territorial bond that has always linked a fan to his local team is broken. The most famous players have become stars as big as clubs. And if they change their jerseys, they can also take their fans with them.
il Fatto Quotidiano, January 13th 2021
Territorial support indeed feels like a distant memory. The clubs were born to give pride to the city or town they were conceived in. In some cases, as for example in Milan, clubs were born to represent distinct social groups: AC Milan supporters were originally proletarian streetcar operators, while Inter Milan was subsequently created by the so called “baüscia”, the middle class. That’s why someone born in Naples would root for SSC Napoli, a boy from Florence would support purple ACF Fiorentina, and so on.
Though it was Agnelli himself that in 2017 started a dangerous trend, deciding to rebrand the Juventus club.
Probably this choice was initially taken because of the low number of supporters worldwide: although Juventus is by far the most supported team in Italy, in the global ranking the club is found in 13th place with 27 million supporters (between Tottenham, in 12th, and Borussia Dortmund, in 14th); far behind its compatriots AC Milan (8th place, 95 million supporters) and Inter Milan (9th place, 55 million).
This decision, that was decisively meant to transform the club into a brand, hit hard on territoriality and this appears very clearly when we look at the evolution of the Juventus logo.
Let’s say that clarity has never truly been a prerogative of Juventus FC. The club’s logo was conceived with Turin’s symbol in it: a rampant bull, but was soon transformed, due to its colors - black and white - into a rampant zebra in 1929. Then two years later they went back to the bull which remained in the logo until 1979 when the zebra fiercely took over the club’s identity.
The 2017 rebranding canceled almost all of the elements that were part of the club’s heritage and connection to the city. The city of Turin suddenly vanished from Juventus’ identity.
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One year later, Juventus bought the striker that is considered - together with Messi - the sport’s best player ever: Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo truly is an amazing player, but most of all he is a brand is worth millions; a brand that is called “CR7” (as his jersey number) and that has, among all sportsmen, the highest number of followers on social media (@cr7cristianoronaldo 4,6mil — @cristiano 381mil).
Juventus was sure that the co-branding could lead the club to climb the ranking and make the bianconeri a world-class brand, but it didn’t turn out that well on the pitch and after three seasons without hitting the long-desired target of winning the Champions League, CR7 abruptly broke the contract and flew back to Manchester. Probably in order to remind the world that he is a human being and not some kind of automatic money machine, the farewell was communicated with a blatant typo, writing Grazzie instead of Grazie (= thank you). The Italian social media went crazy about this for over a week, while I personally have doubts that the error wasn’t made on purpose.
What did this bulky partnership actually leave behind? Probably just a colossal break in that territorial bond we were mentioning earlier, between fans and their local team.
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Because what we also know is that eradicating identity from heritage has never been an option for a club like FC Barcelona, that not only is ranked as the second most supported club worldwide (450 million followers) but more than once has put identity before profit.
In 2017 Pep Guardiola, then coach of the team, took a stand at a pro-Catalonia independence rally, asking "democracies in Europe and around the world to stand by us as we defend our rights of freedom, political expression and the right to vote.” His call received the endorsement of the overwhelming majority of his players.
For several seasons in a row, the club chose to substitute the big sponsored logo on the front of the jersey with the UNICEF symbol, donating 2 million euro annually to the fund. This gesture was immensely appreciated worldwide as a return of football to shared values.
When Francesco Totti (AS Roma) left played football in 2017 many argued that it probably represented the end of an era in which a player would grow up wearing the jersey of his local team, never considering millionaire offers to move to clubs owned by international funds or Russian tycoons. They were probably right: that kind of football, strongly attached to the colors of the club and tied to the imagery of local kids is far gone. Or maybe not?
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Earlier this year, Nike launched its City Connect Series to “explore the bond among baseball, community and culture”. Nike has been working with each MLB team to craft a uniform that expresses the personality and communities of the teams’ home cities. The end result was astonishingly brave and powerful.
The Los Angeles Dodgers became “Los Dodgers” as a tribute to their Latino fanbase and their iconic “Viva Los Dodgers” chant. And the same goes for the Arizona Diamondbacks, transformed into “Serpientes”, inspired by the climate and terrain of the Sonoran Desert.
But also one of Baseball’s most famous teams, the White Sox, decided to pay tribute to its most resilient fans, based in Chicago’s South Side, historically a working class neighborhood, shield and sword of America’s most varied ethnic composition. (For those who have watched the American version of Shameless none of this will come as a complete surprise).
This series represents a wise and sensible attempt to reconnect high-level sports with the imagery of young kids, beyond profit and especially beyond the individual economic worth of a player.
In the USA this bond has lasted especially thanks to basketball, that has - with its social fabric deeply rooted in the less well-off social classes - always retained a strong sense of belonging with the hometowns.
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A concept - going back to football - that has surprisingly been adopted in Italy during the ongoing season by the newly promoted Venezia FC.
The Venetians had their debut this August and astonished the Serie A viewers with a jersey kit far different compared to all the other teams. Venezia, now owned by an American group of investors and back into the major league after 19 years of absence, decided to do things differently and to surprise us all renouncing to the main sponsorship logo on the front of the shirts, substituting it with a huge and horizontal VENEZIA written in gold.
Not only. Together with their technical partner Kappa, the shirts were entirely designed as a tribute to beautiful and unique Venice. The texture that covers the entire shirt is inspired by the facades of historic Venetian buildings, but it is not the only reference to the architecture and art that characterizes the city: the stars of the Basilica of San Marco are printed in gold on the front on the home kit, while on the away kit the shirts are enriched with a triangular pattern that recalls the traditional Venetian mosaics.
Also, for every kit sold, 5 euro will be donated to a local NGO actively working at the protection of the Venetian lagoon.
If you happen to visit the official Instagram account of the club, you will easily notice how images from the field alternate with beautiful glimpses of Venice, often putting an accent on dreamy ambitions and territorial pride.
We can only hope that this might represent a rising trend to rethink football as a whole, considering its massive role in children’s education, again becoming a vehicle to strong values such as respect, team work, acceptance and solidarity, as they were not so long ago.
Also this is human branding: bringing back value and purpose to industrialized markets that seem to have lost their soul, always putting identity before profit. It might not lead them to constant victory and to have the best scorers in the world, but it will on the other hand recreate an affectionate fanbase that will believe and trust in them.
So here’s our provocation. We launch a call to action to all the agencies or freelance graphic designers reading: to redesign the jersey of your hometown team (of whatever sport you prefer) according to their true heritage, creating a strong bond with the local community.
For example, redesigning AC Milan’s and FC Inter’s jerseys, following Nike’s concept of the City Connect Series. The first one paying tribute to the so-called “casciavit” (literally: screwdriver), the streetcar operators; the second one to the “baüscia”, the fancier white-collar middle class. Send us your artwork at info@nopanic-agency.com. No Panic will showcase all your work on their social profiles.
Maybe the clubs, thanks also to your effort, will take inspiration and will soon be able to reconnect their supporters to the territory and to give sports values a second chance.
We need to go back to believing as soon as possible that not everything has to do with economical revenue.
Not sports, at least.
Not the kids’ dreams.
first appeared on Human Brands Observatory on November 4th 2021
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