Italy's football leagues on hold for now, but consequences could be long-lasting

ROME - The world of Italian football may be feeling the effects of the global coronavirus outbreak for years to come.

Italy's top football league, Serie A, was among the first major entities to respond to risks associated with the pandemic. The league first postponed games scheduled to be played in the northern parts of the country where the Italian outbreak began in mid-February, followed by ordering games to be played in empty stadiums. On March 10, as part of the national lockdown announced by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, all professional football games were canceled.

The season usually runs from August to May, but now it's anyone's guess when the final weeks of the 2019-20 season will be played.

"We know we have to fight this outbreak as a team, with the single goal of defeating this pandemic," Gabriele Gravina, president of Federcalcio, the country's main football association, told Xinhua. "We are prioritizing the safety of our athletes, referees, and fans and we are waiting for the right conditions to present themselves so we can restart."

Gravina said the season will not be finalized with the standings from when the last game was played March 9 -- Juventus held a slim lead over Lazio when the season was paused -- but that it would restart whenever health worries abated.

But according to Guglielmo Stendardo, a 15-year veteran of Serie A now working as a sports law professor at Rome's LUISS University, worries for Italian football extend beyond when the Serie A season will resume.

"I worry about the amateur leagues and the youth leagues," Stendardo said in an interview. "They rely on sponsors and under the current economic conditions, a study I helped conduct predicts that conservatively speaking, at least 30 percent of them might not re-open after the coronavirus is gone."

Stendardo said if that happens, it could have wide-ranging consequences. First, he said, amateur leagues account for around a third of the 6 billion euro ($6.5 billion) impact that football has on the country's economy.

"Between revenues from broadcasting, merchandise, and ticket sales the football industry stands to lose around 700 million euros ($765 million), and the amateur leagues are likely to suffer the most," he said.

But more long-term impacts could come from the fact that the amateur and youth leagues are where the next generation of players hone their skills. Stendardo said that if a third of those formative leagues close it would likely have an impact on the level of Italian players in the professional ranks, and even the strength of the national team in future competitions like the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championships.

To prevent that, Stendardo and other analysts are calling for the government to take some precautionary steps, such as a one-percent levy on wagers placed on professional games once they re-start. Assuming betting parlors do around the same amount of business they had been doing before the outbreak, he said that would provide more than 100 million euros ($109 million) that could be used to help support amateur leagues.