This week’s seminar in the Doctoral Program in Regional Development and Economic Integration (DRIE) is titled “Whose Ball Is This? The Opacity of Beneficial Owners as a Facilitator of Fraud and Crime in Football: An Empirical Investigation of Italian Football Leagues.” It will be led by Francesco Addesa, from Leeds Beckett University.
In recent years, transparency in the ownership of football clubs has become a central issue on the agenda of FIFA, UEFA, and national football federations. The increasing number of foreign investors, as well as concerns related to multi-asset ownership, conflicts of interest, and collusion between football clubs and sponsors, or with player agents, have demanded a greater understanding of who is behind football clubs. Furthermore, the numerous instances of criminal practices observed in this area—match-fixing, organized crime infiltration, and tax evasion—led the European Parliament (2024) to include football clubs among the entities subject to the new anti-money laundering measures. Despite these warnings, empirical knowledge about the ownership of European football clubs remains limited. Few studies exist—mostly descriptive—and these focus primarily on English football (Duncan and Lord, 2024; 2025). This article investigates 265 clubs registered in the four major Italian football leagues (Serie A, B, C, and D) in order to:
- Reconstruct the entire ownership structure of each club, identifying the ultimate beneficial owners or other beneficial owners.
- Calculate indicators of anomalies and risks related to their ownership structure.
- Examine whether the opacity of ownership structures correlates with bankruptcies, point deductions, league exclusions, and criminal activity.
The study sheds light on the degree of foreign exposure in Italian football, especially regarding owners from high-risk jurisdictions in the lower divisions. The results also show that the likelihood of point deductions or exclusion from the league is higher for clubs involving investment funds or corporate vehicles that obscure the true owners, as well as for those with higher turnover in ownership and management. The article concludes by proposing policy recommendations on how to increase transparency in football and how to better monitor the movement of fraudulent investors from one club (or country) to another.
The seminar will take place this Thursday, May 7th, at 4:30 p.m. in the Faculty of Economics and Business.
If you cannot attend in person and would like to participate via Teams, you can request the meeting access details by emailing idega@usc.gal.
