Serie A acquires 51% of Quadronica, the fantasy football app with seven million users
The League's over 18 million investment aims to integrate the digital game with real football, exploiting data and new advertising opportunities to expand fan engagement
There is a football that is watched and a football that is played without the ball, but with the same ferocity: the day of the championship (to speak of Sunday with the current split is now out of time) does not end at the end of the matches, it continues on the couch, between an app and a chat.
The Fanta football is now a parallel league of some 7 million subscribers. Now Serie A has decided to stop being just the fuel for that engine and has decided to get its hands on it.
The go-ahead came on 16 February during the Lega Serie A assembly, with the yes to the purchase of 51% of the shares of Quadronica: a Srl set up in 2008 and 50% controlled by two Neapolitan entrepreneurs from 1975, Nino Ragosta and Luigi Cutolo, to whom management will remain.
President Ezio Simonelli, president of the Lega Serie A, recounts it in a matter-of-fact tone, but the sense is of a step forward that is by no means trivial: "Very calm assembly, we have taken a number of decisions, including the purchase of the majority of Fantasy Football, in order to enrich it with our images and give it an increasingly attractive product.
The price, according to the Sole 24 Ore, is just over €18 million, out of an overall valuation close to €40 million. The latter is almost twice as much as two years ago.
