U.S. Virgin Islands Legislators Appropriate Funds to Sponsor Soccer Team in Montescudaio, Italy

ST. CROIX, U.S. Virgin Islands, Aug. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Beginning in September, members of US Montescudaio, the soccer team of Montescudaio, Italy, will be donning jerseys emblazoned not with the escutcheon of the 12th-century, hilltop, Tuscan village which is famous for its wines, but instead with the official seal of the U.S. Virgin Islands, renowned for its rum and located thousands of miles away from Italy -- in the Caribbean Sea. The brain behind this unlikely collaboration is actually two brains -- those of Virgin Islands senator Wayne A.G. James and Montescudaio mayor Aurelio Pellegrini.

For the sum of $50,000 US dollars, the mid-level Italian soccer team, which is a member-team of Federazione Italiana Gioco Calcio (F.I.G.C.), the Italian Football Federation, and attracts players from much larger Tuscan towns such as Florence, Livorno, Cecina, Pisa, and Siena, will promote the US Virgin Islands as a summer tourist destination to Italians during its nine-month soccer season between September of 2010 and May of 2011. In addition to the name of the Virgin Islands being prominently displayed on players' uniforms and dressing equipment throughout the football season and during the Italian Cup Tournament, the town of Montescudaio will promote the Virgin Islands as a summer destination in publications such as the National Guide of the Most Beautiful Italian Villages and guides for Towns of Wine, Towns of Oil, and Towns of Bread. Then, of course, the Virgin Islands will be promoted on Tuscan television and in the region's sports newspapers and magazines each week.

"Football is Italy's national pastime," Senator James said. "And a Caribbean island sponsoring an Italian soccer team just might turn out to be the Italian equivalent of the Jamaican bobsled team participating in the 1998 Winter Olympics. Football is the world's biggest sport. And football is Italy's biggest sport. I can think of no better way to promote my islands in Italy than by linking them to Italian football. Besides, the Italians are saddened by their disappointing performance in the 2010 World Cup after having won the coveted Cup in 2006, so for Virgin Islanders to reach across the Atlantic and support soccer is a wonderful way to consummate our twin-city brotherhood. It is a 'twin-twin' situation:  We support Italian football, and the Italians use their love of football to promote us."

Italy is presently the fourth-largest source of the almost three million tourists who visit the U.S. Virgin Islands each year, with the U.S. representing over 90% of the market, followed by Canada and Denmark. And of all the tourists who visit the Virgin Islands, Italians, per person, spend more money than tourists from any country, including those from the U.S.

Since the 1980s the Virgin Islands has maintained a tourism office in Milan, but that office has traditionally engaged in the tried-and-tested approach of off-shore tourism offices:  issuing press releases and distributing glossy brochures; hosting travel-industry journalists; organizing and participating in trade shows; and serving delicious rum punches spiked with the islands' award-winning Cruzan Rum, for example. But the James-Pellegrini idea -- to use Italian football to market a Caribbean destination to Italians -- is a unique one. It is the marketing equivalent of placing an ad featuring an haute couture gown in a hardware magazine:  it is probably going to get noticed.  

"Italians spend on average 12 days in the islands, stay in the most luxurious hotels, and eat in the best restaurants," James said. "And because they get the entire month of August off each year, they are a perfect source for summer tourists. Just as their football season ends in May, they can come to our islands from June to August, then be back home in Italy just in time for the next football season, which begins each September. It is a match made in tourism heaven."

Both leaders met at the suggestion of their mutual friend, Tuscan architect Alessandro Sonetti, who urged them to form a twin-city alliance in order to encourage friendship, trade, and tourism between the three historic towns of the Virgin Islands, namely Charlotte Amalie, Christiansted, and Frederiksted -- built during the 17th and 18th centuries when the now-American islands were owned by Denmark -- and the picturesque Italian village, located in the Tuscan hills, about 60 kilometers from Pisa.  

In November of 2009, James visited Pellegrini and met with the Montescudaio's Twin-City Commission amidst much Italian pomp and circumstance, not to mention the wine tastings; and two months later, in January of 2010, an Italian delegation of four visited the Virgin Islands and were treated to Island-style hospitality -- lots of music, food, rum, and breathtakingly beautiful beaches. But the twin-city relationship hasn't been all fun and no work:   In December of 2009, James rallied a majority of the 15-member Virgin Islands Senate to pass Resolution No. 1744, which establishes the twin-city alliance with Montescudaio in perpetuity; and on July 4, 2010 in Italy, James and Pellegrini, at a formal ceremony witnessed by 2,000 people and conducted under the watchful eye of Italian carabinieri, signed the documents which establishes the twin-city brotherhood under Italian law.

"At the foundation of the alliance is friendship," James said. "But Pellegrini and I immediately saw the mutual potential for tourism and trade. Since the 1800s, Montescudaio has been famous for its wines. And Cruzan Rum, produced on St. Croix, Virgin Islands, is regarded as one of the best rums in the world. Italian wines are found on menus of the numerous fine restaurants in the islands, and Italians have long had a liking for rum. Our rum, their wines…Sounds like fun times….

"And Italians are known for their penchant for warmer climates," James continues. "And interestingly -- and surprisingly -- the Virgin Islands, because we were blessed with trade winds and an average summer temperature of 82 degrees Fahrenheit, is actually more comfortable than most Tuscan towns and villages in July, August, and September."

But though James and Pellegrini, being the politicians that they are, might want to take credit for initiating Italian-Virgin Islands relations with their twin-city alliance, the fact is that Italy and the Virgin Islands have been interconnected for hundreds of years. Besides Columbus' historic discovery of the Virgin Islands on his second voyage in 1493, for example, the annals of Virgin Islands history are replete with Italian surnames, many of which can still be found in local telephone directories -- though the skin pigmentation of the present-day bearers of those names is somewhat darker than their ancestral namesakes. Family names such as Bonelli, Marcelli, Fabio, and Vargo have been in the islands since the 1800s. And from the early to mid-1900s, names such as Farchette, Gasperi, Casinelli, Castruccio, and Paraliticci have been prominent in the islands, so much so that today those families can claim three, and in some cases, four island-born generations.

"In a world-wide recession, it is comforting to know that there are still possibilities for international friendships and trade," James said. "We can no longer afford to sit back and think that the world will come to us. We have to reach out to the world. That should be our ultimate goal.

"Tourism departments can easily spend $50,000 on a couple of glossy, full-page ads in a magazine," James said. "The Virgin Islands legislature's outside-the-box decision to promote summer tourism through a $50,000 sponsorship of a mid-level football team in a Tuscan village will score points in the hearts of Italians, Virgin Islanders, and people the world over. And as the adage goes, 'Do it with love and the money will come,' " James concluded.

SOURCE Office of Senator Wayne A.G. James