Roma and Lazio have been hit by losses of more than €5.5 million as the result of supporter protests at the Olimpico during Serie A matches. It is the club owned by Claudio Lotito who have come off worse as a result of the fans’ decisions to stay away from the stadium in protest against new safety measures: the Biancocelesti have lost €4.28 million in revenue from league matches over the course of just one season. Roma have been able to limit their losses to €1.26 million compared to the previous campaign. These figures come from cross-examining the financial statements of the two clubs, who both use the Olimpico for their home matches. Lazio’s ticket sales for Serie A matches at the ticket office were down by 220,000 – which is partly down to the fans’ antipathy towards their president as well – and sales were down by 83,000 for Roma.
Taking into account both season ticket holders and individual ticket sales, Lazio brought in €6.73 million during the 2015/16 season from their league matches, a figure which is 38.85% less than the previous year, confirmed by the club in their financial report. The total revenue from the Biancocelesti’s ticket office, including Coppa Italia and European matches, is around €8 million, and the total amount of spectators provides a telling statistic: “In the season just gone,” the club writes, “in total there were 538,603 fewer supporters compared to the total of 733,188 from the 2014/15 season (-26.54%).”
Things were considerably better on the other side of the Tiber, which was in part because – while the protests against the safety measures did have an effect – there were no protests directly against the club. Looking at just their Serie A fixtures, Roma lost out on €1.26 million in a year. As can be seen in their accounts, their match day revenue – split almost exactly equally between season tickets (€9.6 mln) and single tickets (€9.5 mln) – totals €19.1 mln, compared to €20.4 mln in the previous year. This decrease of around 6% needn’t alarm the Giallorossi though, as they were able to cover these losses by bringing in more revenue from other competitions: the total income from home games came to €48.9 mln, around €7 mln more than the 2014/15 season, with European games alone bringing in €29 mln from the ticket office compared to €20 mln the season before.
The future isn’t bright for either of the capital’s clubs though. A rough comparison can be obtained by looking at the attendances at the Stadio Olimpico in the first seven games of the 2014/15 season with the early games of the current season, and it looks as though the fans’ protests are set to continue: two years ago 250,000 fans – comprising matches involving both Roma (four) and Lazio (three) – went to the stadium; this year – using the same breakdown of matches – only slightly more than 175,000 fans have gone.
