the basketball market | Italy

Presentation and definition

Basketball clubs allow players with an annually renewed license to play basketball by forming teams, according to their age and gender, with several practices per week as well as games in national, regional or departmental leagues. They generally represent a city or a region.

In 2017, basketball was the 4th most played sport in Italy with more than 300,000 licensed players, or 7.1% of the national sports membership, behind soccer, tennis and volleyball. It also ranks 4th in the number of clubs in the federation, with 3,000 clubs affiliated with the Federazione Italiana Pallacanestro (FIP), the governing body of basketball in Italy.

The major league in Italy is the Lega Basket Serie A, in which 16 teams play. Public and private sponsorships account for 70% of total club revenues, ticketing 20%, and television rights and other income 10%. In the 2019-2020 season, the brand value of the Lega Basket Serie A teams alone was worth 23.3 million euros, or 21% of the total revenue of the Serie A system (110 million euros).

The sanitary crisis has had a very negative effect on basketball revenues in Italy, primarily due to the early ending of all championships. The losses amounted to more than 40 million euros.