Bologna held a press conference where president Joey Saputo and his right hand man Claudio Fenucci spoke about Bologna’s season, the 2017 financial situation of the club and the status of their five year plan.
“We are making great efforts to build the base for a solid club. I will always be transparent. We are working on ensuring the club will move up higher in the future and will do so slowly, one step at a time.”
“We had a five year plan and we are on target with the objectives we’ve set. Compared to the start of last season in Serie A, next season the club will have almost an additional 9 million in revenues which will help us be more competitive.”
Saputo reiterated that Bologna is in a rebuilding process and additional investments from the ownership will be required to increase the payroll budget and balance the books at the end of the season.
As for the season, Saputo hoped Bologna would have done better than the previous season in the standings. Bologna lacked continuity and must improve with new players who will make the team more competitive. This will help Bologna who “lost many points in the last few minutes of too many games.”
Nonetheless the most important objective was met, being the experience gained by the young players who matured and are ready to contribute more.
Claudio Fenucci:
“Our objective is to continue growing our revenues, part of which we can do so ourselves with commercial revenue and revenue from the stadium. The other part, as we have previously stated, can come from a change in the distribution of TV revenue. This is the primary asset of Italian football clubs and until the distribution of revenues doesn’t become more meritocratic it will be difficult to grow revenues.”
Plans for the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara are on-going. Without going into specifics, Saputo explained how the climate in Bologna is “less difficult” regarding the stadium than the experience he had building Stade Saputo in Montreal.
