“I was surprised,” he said. “I don’t know anyone in Bari. I have barely ever been there.”
More surprising still, however, is that De Laurentiis eventually said yes. Napoli and Bari are, strictly speaking, rivals, but suddenly the same family owned them: the older De Laurentiis in charge of the former, and his son, Luigi, given control of the latter.
It was not, needless to say, a universally popular move. Though Bari’s fans were broadly welcoming — “They saw we were serious people,” Aurelio De Laurentiis said — there was dissent in Naples. “Get out of our city,” read one banner, slung from railings in the city the night the Bari purchase was announced.
De Laurentiis insists that owning another team will not draw his focus from his first love. “Napoli is Napoli, Bari is Bari,” he said. His son, meanwhile, is adamant that the expertise he and his father have gleaned on the Tyrrhenian coast now can be applied on the Adriatic.
“We started from zero,” Luigi said of Bari. “We had to create the brand, starting with a new crest, and then do all of the things necessary for a team: a season-ticket campaign, a website, the marketing, the social media, the jerseys, finding sponsors.”
The rationale, the younger De Laurentiis said, is obvious. “Bari has a national appeal; we are the only team in our division being broadcast nationally,” he said, the result of a partnership with the streaming service DAZN. Apulia itself has seen a boom in tourism in recent years; the opportunity, the younger De Laurentiis said, was too good to ignore.
The plan, needless to say, is to restore Bari to the top flight, even if that would create a battle with the game’s authorities over whether two teams in the same competition can have the same ownership.
“Bari is a recognizable brand,” Luigi said. “It is not Frosinone. It has played in Serie A. It has a long list of famous former players.”
It is not the sort of team, in other words, that Aurelio De Laurentiis would denounce as a sparring partner, a club whose only purpose is to pad out the standings and to pick up a paycheck. De Laurentiis might compulsively court controversy. He might prod and poke and provoke his rivals, and soccer’s authorities. He might do it all in the name of entertainment. He is, though, as good as his word. Bari is putting his money where his mouth is. He thinks soccer needs to change. So he is trying to change it.
Source : NYtimes
