With the establishment on 15 January 2024 of Office X – Sports Diplomacy in the Directorate General for Country Promotion – Central Directorate for Integrated Promotion, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has added sports diplomacy as a new tool for the strategic promotion of Italy to the wide range of initiatives and actions already in place and at the service of growth diplomacy.
In the wake of the action carried out for the internationalisation of enterprises and the promotion of Italy as a system, sports diplomacy offers the opportunity to present and represent Italian excellence through a new and different lens: the lens of sport and its protagonists, athletes and industries.
The aim is to support the internationalisation of sport and its supply chains, to promote the districts connected to it, to use major international sporting events and their worldwide visibility to promote tourism and investment, using them as showcases of Italian know-how and as a window to their territories and culture, to promote the innovation and sustainability, inclusion and integration that characterise the sports sector, and to implement integrated promotional initiatives to strengthen Italy’s reputation abroad through sport, understood as an industry, and a factor of economic and social growth for the country.
To achieve these objectives, sports diplomacy shall foster:
- partnerships with sports federations and competent bodies and other administrations;
- promotional initiatives and communication campaigns, in Italy and abroad, which leverage on sport and on the visibility offered by sporting events to enhance the “Made in Italy” brand in the world (recent examples);
- the launch of a new event abroad entitled “La giornata dello sport italiano nel mondo” (Italian sports day in the world) to be held during the second week of September and which, starting in 2024, will be an opportunity to showcase, through sport and its protagonists, Italian excellence, districts and industries in the sector, as well as to valorise young people and Italian communities;
- the design and production of original content for the international public to be disseminated in a number of formats, ranging from exhibitions to audio-visual products. The initiatives to be made available to the international public through the diplomatic network include:
1) A modular exhibition organised with the M9 Museum, entitled “Oltre i limiti. Sport Italia, ritratto corale di un Paese che cambia” (Beyond Limits. Sport Italy, choral portrait of a changing country), to be made available in digital format so as to be printed and set up on site. The exhibition will focus on the past, present and future of sport in Italy. It will narrate not only the major accomplishments achieved by Italy in the different competitive disciplines, but also the entire transformation of the country through a perspective lens.
2) ComunichiAmo lo sport italiano. Gestualità Made in Italy (Communicating Italian Sport. Made in Italy gestures)
A promotional video-campaign narrating Italian sport through non-verbal communication and the gestures peculiar to each discipline; an innovative project that connects and combines the cultural elements connected to sport with the economic promotion of the sports sector, through an explicit reference to districts and production chains.
RELEVANT CONTACTS:
Directorate General for Country Promotion
Office X – Sports Diplomacy
E-mail: dgsp-10@esteri.it