Once upon a time, to see Hollywood celebrities, you had to go to the cinema or at most attend the premieres of their films hoping to get on their radar before or after walking the red carpet. Now you simply need to buy a ticket for the match Like Calcium to find himself in front of actors of the caliber of Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield and Michael Fassbender. This is not a utopian multiverse nor a collective hallucination, but what happens in any of the championship matches that the Como team plays at home, in the Sinigaglia stadium: Sunday 10 December, for example, in the stands – and taken very well , complete with stadium cheering – there were Knightley, currently at the top of the Netflix charts with the spy story Black DovesFassbender and Adrien Brody. Their celebration for Como’s victory against Roma went viral on all social media. In recent weeks, Andrew Garfield and Hugh Grant have appeared, equally involved in the match.
We have known that Como was a tourist destination much loved by the Hollywood elite since the days of Villa Oleandra, the mansion on the lake in Laglio, which George Clooney bought for 7 million dollars in 2002 (he sold it in 2023) and which over the years has become a crossroads of stars: in 2010 Emily Blunt and John Krasinski even chose it as the location for their wedding. Every year, starting from the boom generated by Clooney’s arrival on the lake, dozens of celebrities land on its shores: before divorcing, Chiara Ferragni and Fedez also purchased a property in these parts, Villa Matilda, now on sale pending of a new owner.
Without the variable summer holidays and VIP weddings, why did celebrities of this caliber end up in the stands of a football match, in the middle of winter and without any apparent connection with the Lombard city? Quickly said: it is the owners of the team, the Indonesian entrepreneurs Robert Budi Hartono and Michael Bambang Hartono, who invited them. The duo, who managed to bring Como from Serie D to Serie A in just a few years, has adopted an unconventional promotional technique to broaden the range of action of the team, whose merchandising is selling like hotcakes abroad, so much so that it has become a glamorous brand: the tactic is to invite these stars, offering them a complete VIP package including dinners, exclusive stays and, indeed, the match as the icing on the cake, so as to amplify the resonance of the match
The effect of this strategy is rather dystopian, but fun: the VIP guests of the match are so enthusiastic about the result that they seem hyper-involved with the team’s performances, even if the Serie A championship currently sees Como Calcio among the last positions and therefore very far from the first in the standings. And so yes, to see an important VIP you no longer need to go on the red carpet, you just need to buy a ticket to see Como and that’s it.
