”Before, I didn't know soccer, I wasn't a soccer person, I saw it as a fan and it was difficult for me to understand,” says Andrés Blázquez. “The economic sustainability of a team does not consist of selling players to plug holes but rather that recurring income, which is highly predictable, allows you to continuously maintain a positive result.”
At 53 years old, this old Castilian from Aranda de Duero who trained as a physicist and engineer and specialized in chip design, struggles to hide a certain perplexity. Destiny, private capital, and his adventurous spirit make him the first Spanish general director in the history of Serie A, and not just any club. He sits in the chair of the Genoa Cricket and Football Club, Italy's first football club, founded in 1893. “I'm in the office, a 16th century palace,” he says, pointing to the frescoed vault. “Who would think that a football team is based in a palace like this?”
Like a relic of a distant past, the Genoa lay buried on the margins of the calcium when Blázquez assumed his presidency at the end of 2021. His credentials in the Serie A leadership concert were, to say the least, eclectic. “My professional life began as a macrochip designer,” he says. “Later I joined a multinational as a consultant and went to Argentina, where I worked for three years and supervised oil wells in Malargüe. I did a Master's degree at the European Institute of Business Administration, in Fontainebleau, and Ana Botín took me to Spain. Then I bought a dairy company and a telecommunications company in Georgia. I sold them for a good return and ended up at Guggenheim Partners, a large financial services company where I met Todd Boehly. One day I convinced a friend from the 777 Partners holding company to enter football with a very clear idea: a multi-club project. From the beginning we thought it was the only way to create sustainability.”
Having a local beer on the tap at the Genoa stadium is not the same as going to a multinational beer group and saying: 'let's do a business in which you put your name on stadiums and t-shirts of teams that together have a potential following of 6 billion global audience”
American capital and club timeshare companies are two rivers that converge so strongly that they threaten to provoke the greatest structural change that the industry has experienced in the last half century. Like BlueCo, Todd Boehly's company that acquired Chelsea and Strasbourg; like Stan Kroenke, owner of Arsenal and the Colorado Rapids of the MLS; Or, as City Group or Red Bull did, 777 Partners looked at the exponential increase in margins that timeshares entail. The Miami-based company covered more than any other. They began by acquiring 5% of Sevilla in 2018, and although they ended up expelled from the board of the Andalusian club, today they control companies as diverse as Standard de Liege in Belgium; the Red Star of Paris, of the French Third; Vasco da Gama in Brazil; and Genoa. Now they are negotiating the purchase of Everton in the Premier.
“Each holding company has its own concept,” he observes. “Red Bull is more about generating talent very focused on sports with a great company that covers sponsorship; City is a great team and the others are like their suppliers in search of a star. They all have pros and cons. The virtue of our model is that it cultivates the identity of each of the teams that comprise it and improves the performance of each one. “We do not conceive that one team is subordinate to another.”
The management of the different quarries and their supply through a global collection network is the secret to multiplying wealth, according to Blázquez. “As a group strategy, perhaps the most significant thing is knowing how to identify all the players in your clubs and knowing if they are adaptable to each of the teams,” he explains. “If, for example, we have a player in Sevilla that I bought for 25 million and I sell him for 50 million, between agents and resales to other clubs I still make a profit of 15 million. What's happening? That I have to stay competitive and spend those 15 on another player. That's the method forward kickI have a cash but I don't have a sustainable profit. But if in my structure I have six players who can functionally occupy a position, they are going to cost me much less because they have grown in my quarry, they have still cost me between 100,000 and three million, and if I sell one for 50, in addition to having others that can replace it, I have profits of 40 that I can invest to have a better sporting result. Maybe it's better to take him to Standard for a while and then to Genoa or Seville, or to Everton. This process will take a couple of years to be applied. It is about bringing together the best talent in the holding company: better scout, better analyst, better marketing manager… it allows you to amortize talent. “I don't have to have the best marketing manager at Genoa because I have the best in the group.”
”Another important part of the strategy is sponsorships,” he points out. “Having a local beer on the stadium tap is not the same as going to a multinational brewing group and telling them: 'let's do a business in which you have your name on the panels of all our stadiums, the name of a lounge in all the stadiums or the sleeve of all the shirts of all the teams, and thus we make a global agreement with teams that together have a potential following of 6,000 million audiences.' “This strategy multiplies the value of my commercial assets as a club and ensures sustainability in the group's income.”
We multiplied the marketing sale by nine and we have the highest percentage of stadium fullness in Serie A, and one of the highest in Europe: close to 98%. “It is the highest percentage of subscriptions in the history of Genoa”
Andrés Blázquez is proud of having integrated with his family into the social fabric of Genoa when Enrico Preziosi, the controversial previous owner, suffered the rejection of the genoani. “When we arrived we sold 3,000 pieces of clothing a year and now 25,000,” she says. “We have done a campaign on Instagram to give a more international and younger touch, to reach another type of audience: Genoa is associated with Boca Juniors and Galatasaray, Galata was the Genoese neighborhood of Istanbul. We believe there is great brand expansion potential in the large Italian-American and Italian-South American communities. When I arrived, the former CEO said 't-shirts are not sold here'. We multiplied the marketing sale by nine and we have the highest percentage of stadium fullness in Serie A, and one of the highest in Europe: close to 98%. 33,000 people come in and we practically fill it every game. It is the highest percentage of subscriptions in the history of Genoa. We increased the number of young people who go to the stadium by 150%, a third are between 15 and 25 years old; and in women we rose 45%. In an environment where Florentino Pérez said that young people do not go to the stadium, we have managed to lower the average age by 15%.”
“We hope to achieve that at least 50% of the income is not from television,” he says; “We brought in about 70 million of which about 20 will not be from TV or from the sale of players. We want to reach approximately 50-50. About 80-90 million of which half or more are not from TV but merchandising and sponsorships.”
“Serie A,” he concludes, “with a country more economically powerful than Spain, more population and a very large diaspora in the United States, offers brutal potential. The names of the cities, Venice, Milan, Rome… are trademarks. More than half of the clubs have foreign capital and that introduces new ideas. Milan had not made a profit for decades. Napoli gives historic profits. In three years we have turned Genoa around.”
Andrés Blázquez mixes Italian expressions in his speech. But his mind does not stop traveling to Aranda de Duero. “Next January 6 I will be in El Montecillo,” he says; “watching Arandina-Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey.”
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