Milan Module Review by the 14th Edition FIFA Master Class

We ended our SDA Bocconi module experience with an excellent speech and presentation by Dean Busacca. This was followed by an extraordinary concluding lesson by Prof. Ruta in which he emphasized the importance of learning from different, and sometimes unexpected situations. He talked not only about success through professionalism, but also through personal effort and the uniqueness of each person in the sport industry.

The class could really see the true meaning of all of these aspects during the Sport Event Management sub-module. This was especially true when we were asked to create and organize our ‘potential’ event by creating a business plan with financial attachments and calculations. We presented our ideas during our last day in Milan and as part of our evaluation process at Bocconi.

This final, but no less amazing part of the SDA Bocconi module, was focused on event management and on each influencing element of such events. Our professors covered topics ranging from event crisis management to facility management as a way to help us understand how clubs can maximize their revenues by exploiting their facilities. In order to organize a successful event, we discussed the concept of a business plan and analyzed the challenges and opportunities we need to take into consideration when organizing real events in our future careers. In fact, as we know, sport is about events; without events, we do not have any games, any fans, any spectators, any TV coverage, any sponsorship or any revenues. As a result, we were also asked to create an income statement and cash flow of our ‘potential’ event, encompassing  calculations on how the different elements such as variable costs could influence the success of the event and where the ‘break-even point’ would be.

We combined all of the above factors with the knowledge we had learnt from our previous sub-modules on marketing and accounting in order to understand the complexity of organizing an event and to be able to ‘organize’ our event.

To help us really see what is behind the scenes in organizing such events, different guest speakers were invited to share their personal experiences and to explain how event organization managers should operate in order to maintain event credibility and sustainability.

For example, Paolo Bedin (General Director of Lega Serie B) highlighted the importance today of social responsibility towards society and how Serie B cooperates with different charitable associations to help increase their brand awareness.

We also had the pleasure to meet Yanni Andreopoulos, Director of AEG Sports Europe. He talked about the importance of multi-purpose facilities. On the one hand they create special experiences for those who attend such events. On the other hand they provide a financial attraction and, as consequence, revenue maximization. His presentation added real value to our understanding as he was able to demonstrate the significance of facilities when organizing different events. He also fully explained the implementation of the concepts we had previously learnt in class with real world examples.

Further sessions on events and event marketing were provided by Pascal Sommer who is Associate Director at Infront Group. He shared with us some thoughts on market intelligence, internal capability and ad hoc project consultancy in sport development and marketing.

To help us better our understanding of different opportunities within the sports industry, we welcomed entrepreneur Daniele De Negri. Mr De Negri had established his own company, Sportmaker. He spent several hours with us and demonstrated the growing potential in outdoor and action sports.

The final guest speaker of the Milan module was Alessandro Zoppini - one of the leading multi-purpose stadia architects. How to be flexible, sustainable, low cost, enviro-friendly and always meeting client needs and safety regulations were the main topics of his fascinating lecture.

All of our guest speakers added extra value to our event planning assignment. They allowed us to consider every single detail of event organization and communication.

Another wonderful experience outside of the lecture room was the traditional football match against our Italian colleagues from the Sport Master of Parma and San Marino. This provided the opportunity to play football and to lose against a stronger team. However, we learnt that the final result is not all that matters! In fact, we took advantage of the opportunity to meet new people with the same dreams and aspirations as us, but from completely different backgrounds. By sharing experiences and information we were both able to learn the complexities of another environment and to give our prospective of things. Also our new friends took us around the city centre, showing us some of the beautiful buildings of the city such as the Duomo and the Battistero. We were also introduced to the delicacies of the “cucina emiliana”.

Approaching the end of the module, it was time to celebrate and the CIES and SDA Bocconi kindly scheduled a pizza dinner during the last week of our stay in Milan. We are grateful for the chance to get to know better our professors and to establish connections which will last beyond the end of the module.

The dinner, our presentations, Prof. Ruta’s lesson and Dean`s speech were the perfect way to finish our Milanese-managerial experience and thank SDA Bocconi for hosting us for almost three months. It was a real pleasure to come to school every day and to have so many new experiences. To feel the flow of learning and to interact with such highly qualified professors, guest speakers and the team behind the SDA Bocconi institution was a wonderful experience.

So thanks SDA Bocconi!  Now our lives have been empowered through knowledge and imagination. We are now ready for our last stop of this wonderful lifelong experience. Neuchatel we are coming!