The map of Italian sportswear brands
Where do the "Made in Italy" sports brands come from?
September 3rd, 2021
The 2021-22 Serie A aesthetic is 60% Made in Italy, with Italian brands that wear 12 of the 20 clubs in the top flight of Italian football. This trend, not confirmed in the rest of the European leagues which instead prefer technical sponsorships with foreign brands, is symptomatic of an ever-increasing quality of brands that are able to reconcile the tradition of Italian football style with the new trends. After years of "foreign domination" in terms of sponsorship, many teams - especially of medium caliber - have focused on the rise of Kappa and Macron, two realities that divide half of Serie A.
The more and less recent Italian sportswear brands are spread throughout the territory in a different way than the division of the Serie A teams: the clubs are concentrated mainly in the north (Turin, Juventus, Genoa, Sampdoria, Inter, Milan, Verona, Udinese , Sassuolo, Bologna, Atalanta and Venice) with a presence in the south center of only seven teams (Cagliari, Salernitana, Naples, Lazio, Rome, Empoli and Fiorentina), while the reasoning on sports brands changes this perspective. On the map of the 19 Italian brands, the territorial subdivision is much more homogeneous.
BRANDS | CITIES |
Kappa | Turin |
Macron | Bologna |
Lotto | Trevignano (TV) |
Zeus | Torre Annunziata (NA) |
Givova | Scafati (SA) |
Legea | Pompeii (NA) |
Erreà | Parma |
Mass | Frosinone |
Acerbis | Bergamo |
Diadora | Caerano di San Marco (TV) |
FILA | Biella |
EA7 | Milan |
Pouchain | Borgorose (Ri) |
Galex | Perugia |
Ennerre | Pescara |
Kronos | Vicenza |
Pantofola d'Oro | Ascoli Piceno |
Garman | Bergamo |
Ellesse | Perugia |
Sergio Tacchini | Caltignana (NO) |
EYE Sport | Quartu Sant'Elena (CA) |
Just as many Italian high fashion brands have always been associated with specific places - just think of the combinations Armani-Milan, Stone Island-Modena, Gucci-Florence and Fendi-Rome - also in sportwear the combination of brand and city plays a role important, especially if you evaluate the heritage of a brand. Not all brands, however, have managed to convince the teams of the city they belong to: except for the present and past examples such as Juventus-Kappa, such as Bologna-Macron and Parma-Erreà, there is still no such strong link between team, brand and city.