“Success is measured by audience figures. Value is also measured by what remains.”
A Question I Asked as a Boy
I understand that business exists. I understand that a company has to earn money, sell, attract customers and stay in the market. But at what cost?
I asked myself that question when I was about fourteen, although I would not have put it in those terms then. I supported a team, played football and for a while regularly bought a sports magazine. Then I began to notice something that struck me: the vast majority of its pages were about football. They covered not just matches, technique or tactics, but also the players' private lives, their faults and virtues, controversies, statements and everything that could keep interest in that world alive.
At some point I asked myself a very simple question: what was someone who loved judo supposed to do?
Of course I already understood why it happened. Football attracted more readers and therefore sold more copies. Commercially, there was nothing strange about it. Yet something still bothered me. If I buy a football newspaper, I expect it to talk almost exclusively about football. But if I buy a publication that calls itself a sports magazine, I expect something different: I want it to introduce me to judo, fencing, swimming, athletics, volleyball, cycling, gymnastics and many other disciplines I might never encounter on my own.
Perhaps I was naive, but I thought a sports magazine had that job too: not simply to tell me about what I already knew, but to teach me about sport, broaden my curiosity and help me discover its values.
Being a Fan Is Not the Same as Being Sporting
Over time I have understood more clearly a distinction that still matters to me. Supporting a team does not necessarily make you a sporting person. Dressing in sportswear does not make you one. Watching sport on television does not make you one. Practising a sport, respecting its rules, accepting effort, your opponent and even defeat: that is how you truly come closer to the spirit of sport.
That is why an everyday action in football has always struck me: a defender realises an attacker is faster, cannot catch him and stops him by pulling his shirt. The rules respond with a foul, a caution or a sending-off. But if we put the football setting aside for a moment, one simple fact remains: I cannot beat you within the rules, so I stop you unlawfully.
The problem is not that it happens. Every sport has mistakes, unfair play and rule-breaking. The problem is when media coverage almost dignifies it by calling it an intelligent, tactical or necessary foul. A medium reporting on sport could also remind us that, from an educational point of view, such an action is a defeat that is cultural before it is technical.
When Football Becomes a World Apart
Over the years I have watched the imbalance between football and the rest of sport grow enormously. Just look at newsstands, websites, television schedules and even pay-TV packages: you can buy a package called Sport and then discover that some football matches require a separate purchase. It is almost an unintended joke: football no longer seems merely to be a sport, but a commercial category of its own.
The same disproportion is visible in daily newspapers. Sports papers have a strong presence among the most widely read titles, a clear sign of how much room football and spectator sport occupy in our collective attention. There is nothing wrong with that. But it is fair to ask how much of that space is sports reporting and how much is entertainment built around sport.
Before every top-flight match there are press conferences, statements and predictions. Afterwards come more press conferences, interviews, comments, replays and analyses. And often, at least in my modest opinion, this enormous apparatus produces astonishingly banal remarks: we lost but could have won; we must think about the next match; the referee influenced the result; in football the decisive moments matter.
Of course I do not expect a coach to give a philosophy lecture every time. But I wonder whether we really need to build hours of coverage around ideas that could often be said almost interchangeably before or after any match.
Is Economic Value Real Value?
Then there is the financial side, which troubles me even more. Coaches and leading figures in major football can earn millions of euros a year. It is not envy: if someone can legitimately obtain such a contract, good for them. My question is different: how do we decide what a person's work is worth?
I remember feeling something similar when I read, years ago, about top executives hailed as geniuses while leading companies that were losing enormous sums every day. Yet they were paid handsomely precisely because they were considered indispensable. I joked to myself: “If I were in his place, perhaps no one would notice.” It was a provocation, of course, but behind it was a serious question: if the outcome is so disastrous, by what standard do we recognise the exceptional value that justifies an exceptional salary?
I see something similar in football: multiyear contracts, extremely high pay and, in many cases, financial commitments that remain after a coach has been dismissed. So a person may no longer do the job for which they were hired yet continue to receive amounts that, for many families, would represent a lifetime's income.
Sometimes I read a professional striker's record and find seasons ending with one, two or three goals. Jokingly, I think: “That sounds like me if I played in his place.” I know perfectly well that it is not true: a professional footballer has athletic and technical qualities I do not possess. But once again the joke raises the question of proportion. When a great striker scores more than twenty goals in a season, the talent is obvious even to a non-expert. Something extraordinary is immediately recognisable. When individual results are very modest, however, I find it harder to understand why everything surrounding that world must necessarily take on such enormous financial dimensions.
Legally and contractually, it may all be perfectly correct. But correct and reasonable are not synonyms. The market sets prices through revenue, television rights, sponsors, audiences and bargaining power. I am still free to wonder whether some of these proportions make sense.
Above all, I am free to make one simple choice: not to take part. Not to buy a newspaper that does not interest me, not to pay a subscription just to watch matches, not willingly to give my money to an economic and media system I consider disproportionate. I do not expect others to make the same choice. But I am glad not to contribute even a euro to what I see as a distortion.
Italian Sport Beyond Football
Another contrast makes me think. Fortunately, Italy excels in many other sports and gives us results to be proud of. Athletics, swimming, tennis, volleyball, fencing and numerous other disciplines have produced champions and international successes, often with far less media attention than football receives.
Meanwhile football itself, the richest, most reported-on and most followed sector, has experienced an obvious crisis at national-team level: Italy missed three consecutive World Cups, in 2018, 2022 and 2026.
It would be wrong to attribute this failure automatically to the presence of many foreign players in our league. There may be numerous causes. Yet the question remains legitimate: in a system involving enormous sums, where many teams rely heavily on players from abroad, how much space is left for young Italian players to grow, take responsibility and play at the highest level?
The paradox, at least to my eyes, is clear: often it is the less celebrated and less wealthy sports that bring us our most unambiguous international successes. That too should remind us that a sport's value does not necessarily equal the money it moves or the hours of television we devote to it.
The Circle Closes with Gossip
On reflection, the problem is not limited to football. Gossip newspapers and many television programmes built around quarrels, rumours, private lives and controversies follow the same mechanism. They succeed, so they receive airtime, advertising and investment. And often that very success becomes the justification for producing still more of them.
I do not want to decide what should entertain someone and what should not. I too can watch something simply to relax. But I ask myself a very simple question: what remains with me afterwards?
After a good science, history, culture or current-affairs programme, I may have learned something, discovered an author, a place, a historical fact or an idea. After two hours of shouting, gossip and arguments built on nothing, often almost nothing remains. Perhaps a few names, a controversy or a phrase destined to be replaced the next day by a new controversy.
And yet, fortunately, many worthwhile programmes still exist: documentaries, in-depth reporting, cultural, scientific and historical broadcasts, and knowledgeable people able to explain complex subjects clearly. Often, however, they attract smaller audiences. So the publisher faces the usual choice: if a lightweight programme costs less and draws more viewers, while a high-quality one requires research, skilled writers and preparation but reaches fewer people, where is it more profitable to invest?
The Duty Not Merely to Follow the Audience
This, I think, is the heart of the matter. A medium certainly needs to know its audience. If it completely ignores what interests people, they simply will not read or watch it. But can it limit itself to pursuing what the audience already wants?
I do not think so. I believe it also has a cultural responsibility. That does not mean lecturing people, imposing tastes or deciding from above what is worthy and what is not. It means offering alternatives. Showing what would otherwise remain invisible. Introducing a less prominent sport, an important story that does not generate millions of clicks, a difficult scientific subject, a book, an artist or a historical event. In one word: awakening curiosity.
If we always invest only in what already attracts the largest audience, we create a vicious circle. More is invested in what is popular; what is popular becomes still more visible; what is less visible is discovered by fewer and fewer people. In the end we conclude that this is all people care about. But perhaps people are most interested in what they are constantly shown.
The market measures what people want today. Culture can help create what people will love tomorrow. To me, that is one of the most important responsibilities of those who inform us.
A Personal Choice
Perhaps it all began with that naive question I asked as a boy while looking at a sports magazine. If this is a sports magazine, why should it not help me learn about all sport?
Eventually I stopped buying it. Many years later, when I saw a colleague arrive at work with two newspapers - one to find out what was happening in the world and one entirely about football - I judged him rather harshly in my mind. I was probably unfair. Everyone has a right to their passions, and today I would not judge that person in the same way.
But I still think that the fourteen-year-old boy's question was right. The media should not only tell us about what we already love. They should also help us discover what we do not yet know we could love.
The success of a programme is measured by its audience. Its value, perhaps, also by what remains with the viewer when the screen goes dark.
Salvatore Mosaico
What I Would Like to Leave My Children
I would like the three of you to keep the curiosity to look beyond what everyone else is watching. A match can be entertaining, and there is nothing wrong with that. But do not let ratings, headlines or other people's noise decide on their own what deserves your attention.
Ask yourselves what stays with you after you read, hear or watch something. Look for stories that receive less light, learn to distinguish spectacle from value and, when you can, make room for those without a huge audience. It is a freedom no broadcaster's schedule can choose for you.
Papy