Footballco has acquired Italian digital football news provider CalcioMercato.com and plans more acquisitions driven by backing from Integrated Media Company, the investment venture supported by TPG Capital.
Footballco was spun off following the sale of DAZN Group’s digital football-focused platforms in October 2020. The company has now acquired CalcioMercato.com to add to the earlier acquisitions of Goal.com (now Goal), Spox.de and Dutch football platform VoetbalZone.
Footballco said this morning that its monthly audience of over 400m football fans worldwide would now be bolstered by CalcioMercato.com’s 12m monthly visitors. Until now, Footballco’s position in the Italian market was centred around Goal’s Italian-language edition and its distributed video player.
Juan Delgado, Footballco’s chief executive, said: “This represents a strategic acquisition for us, not only making Footballco the top football platform in Italy, but also in complementing our domestic European footprint – the world’s largest digital football advertising market.
“While CalcioMercato.com’s audience is sizeable, it was important for us to complement and add to our engagement across the continent, now having local champion brands in Germany, Netherlands, UK and Italy, hosting three of the four most competitive and valuable football leagues in the world.”
IMC was set up in 2018 with backing from US-based private equity firm TPG Capital. The deal to acquire a majority stake in Goal, Spox and VoetbalZone valued the three brands at over $100m.
Delgado told SportBusiness that there are plans in place to follow up the CalcioMercato.com purchase with more TPG-backed acquisitions in the football media space in Europe.
He said: “Being backed by one of the biggest PE [private equity] shops on the planet gives us that luxury.
“Europe is the largest digital football market in the world and hence it makes sense for us to pursue opportunities where ROI is easier to drive, leveraging our pan-regional ad sales capabilities, as well as the ability to develop new revenues streams like affiliate ecommerce.
“Having said that, there’s a number of football crazy markets which we are exploring – from Latin America’s passionate ‘torcedores‘, through to the Middle East’s younger and ever-growing digital market.”
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Asked about Footballco’s ambitions in Italy, Delgado remarked: “Italy boasts one of the most popular football leagues in the world and a very healthy and growing digital market, so for those reasons alone, when we saw the opportunity around CM it was a no-brainer.
“Linked to Italy’s position in the football landscape and Europe’s ever-growing pan-regional digital ad market, it’s important for FC to cement itself as the number one player across the continent and in its key football/media markets.
“From here, we plan to consolidate our position between Goal and CM in Italy, leveraging what each brand does best, as well as figuring out new ways to engage with fans beyond ads. Italy is still nascent when it comes to things like affiliate ecommerce, something we’ve begun to explore in more advanced markets like UK (with Goal) or Germany (with Goal and Spox).”
CalcioMercato.com promotes itself as the leading Italian football website for transfer market news and rumours.
It holds a commercial agreement with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy’s leading sports newspaper, under which the RCS MediaGroup-owned entity resells CalcioMercato.com’s premium advertising on an exclusive basis. In parallel, there is a content-sharing agreement in place that allows Gazzetta to access CalcioMercato.com’s football coverage.
Delgado said that the tie-up between the two publishers would certainly continue following the takeover.
He told SportBusiness: “La Gazzetta dello Sport has been a great partner for CalcioMercato.com, where both together have basically cornered the digital publishing football market. To the extent that La Gazzetta dello Sport’s parent company RCS is now second to Google and Facebook in Italy from a digital ad market perspective.”
Any rebranding of CalcioMercato.com or integration into Goal has been ruled out, according to the chief executive, who said that both brands have “huge value in Italy”.
“Both brands will live separately”, Delgado said. “They address different segments of the football ecosystem in Italy, while also being complementary on things like breaking news or access – something that we’ll surely leverage going forwards.”
Carlo Pallavicino, founder and majority shareholder at CalcioMercato.com, said: “Over the past 25 years Calciomercato.com has experienced constant growth and established itself as the daily reference point for millions of passionate football fans.
“Becoming part of Footballco means that we can build on these strong foundations and service both brands and our fans in ways that have not been possible before.”
The Milan-based Vitale & Co advised on the acquisition.
Source: Sports Business
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