Internazionali BNL d’Italia 2026: B2B merch for sponsors, hospitality and teams at the Foro Italico

Merchandising for sponsors and teams at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia

Dates

3–17 May 2026 (two weeks: a week of qualifiers and men’s and women’s main draw, with the men’s and women’s finals on the second Sunday)

Venue

Foro Italico — Stadio Nicola Pietrangeli, Campo Centrale, Stadio Grand Stand, Parco del Foro Italico, Rome

Organiser

Federazione Italiana Tennis e Padel (FITP), with BNL — Banca Nazionale del Lavoro as historical title sponsor

The Internazionali BNL d’Italia — also known as the “Internazionali di Roma” or the “Italian Open” — are the world’s leading clay-court ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 tournament and each May they bring the circuit’s top tennis players to the Foro Italico in Rome for ten days of qualifiers, main draw, doubles and finals. For institutional sponsors, athlete management agencies, corporate hospitality programmes and broadcasters accompanying the tournament, the workable window to set up their merch is usually under twelve weeks, because the match calendar is often locked close to the eve and the final quantities arrive only after the wildcard announcement.

For B2B merchandising around the Internazionali BNL d’Italia, Corp-Merch.IT runs the full supply chain from the Milan hub: intake of the sponsor or athlete agency’s master graphic files (AI, EPS, PDF/X-4 with CMYK images at 300 dpi), art adaptation for the different decoration methods (digital print on GOTS-certified organic cotton, water-based screen-printing on T-shirts and sweatshirts, embroidery on polos, laser engraving on Maniago metal accessories, hot stamping on Scandicci small leather goods), physical pre-production sample with Pantone colour map and technical sheet, production on Italian districts (Como silk and textiles, Scandicci leather, Maniago steel, Faenza ceramics for limited editions, Murano glass for numbered pieces, Capannori paper mills for FSC paper) and delivery to the Rome hotel or to the sponsor’s stand at the Foro Italico on slots the sponsor lead has agreed. For programmes serving several sponsors or several athletes we split into lots labelled per recipient, with distinct delivery addresses if the marketing director wants a share of the kit routed to the tournament’s press room or to the hospitality stand.

The tournament audience is multi-layered: the enthusiast spectator who follows the matches from Campo Centrale, the hospitality client who follows the matches from the honour stand, the sponsor who wants to gift a distinctive object to their own guests, the accredited press that follows every press conference, the broadcasters and content creators who animate the tournament’s calendar, the international federations following the ATP and WTA calendar, the delegates of Italian institutions who accompany the Rome calendar. Each tier wants something different: the spectator wants a branded object they carry through the day at the Foro Italico; the hospitality client wants a distinctive, well-finished object that lasts; the press wants a small, well-finished object that fits in luggage; the broadcaster wants a practical kit they can use through the ten days; the federation wants an object coordinated with the international calendar. A merch programme that respects those five tiers almost always converts better than one that tries to address all of them with the same item.

A recurring case for our clients is merchandising for the hospitality stand of Campo Centrale and the Stadio Grand Stand, where the corporate sponsor receives over ten days hundreds of guests between directors, institutional clients and commercial partners. In these jobs we propose a neutral graphic base — coordinated marks on branded T-shirts, branded hoodie, organic cotton bag, coordinated Como silk article — and add the day’s or the headline match’s details in a second wave at short run, so that each guest finds a coordinated keepsake of the day at the Foro Italico. Printing quality on FSC-certified paper and organic cotton is a frequent request from sponsors attentive to the environmental claim, and we handle it with screen-printing and editorial-printing partners registered with FSC and GOTS certification circuits. For hospitality programmes that include collectable objects (for example autographed tennis balls from the final’s athlete, limited-edition tennis racquets), we coordinate a chain or specific supply with the athlete’s partner, so that the object and the merchandise travel together in the same lot without risk of damage.

Why the Milan hub matters for Rome

Most sponsors, athlete management agencies and marketing directors running a merch programme for the Internazionali BNL d’Italia coordinate their Italian operations from Milan or Rome. The Milan hub lets us consolidate graphic files and Pantone references with the sponsor team, run the pre-production sample on Italian districts (Como textiles, Scandicci leather, Murano glass, Faenza ceramics, Maniago blades, Capannori paper) and dispatch the lot to the Rome hotel or to the sponsor’s stand at the Foro Italico on a 24-to-48-hour courier slot from the Lombardy–Lazio corridor. For programmes pairing an Italian sponsor with an international distribution partner we handle bilingual materials (Italian and English at minimum) and, on request, full multilingual release with text translations aligned with ISO 17100. For programmes pairing the Internazionali BNL d’Italia with Roland Garros we replicate the logistics across both tournaments with a single operations contact and a dedicated MOQ schedule for the international volume.

Merchandising timeline across the ten days

The tournament window is short but the merch programme has to be planned against a calendar that includes the Monday and Tuesday qualifiers of the first week, the main draw from Wednesday to Sunday of the first week, the doubles final and the women’s and men’s singles final on the second Sunday, and the off-calendar of events at the Tennis Village, the Fan Village and the partner clinics of the tournament. For sponsors and athlete agencies the gap between the wildcard announcement and the first main draw day is usually under eight weeks, and any object that has to be on the hospitality stand of Campo Centrale, in the tournament’s press room or at the Fan Village for the first day must be locked and shipped at least one week before the debut. We work backwards from that hour: production must close two to three weeks before the debut; the courier slot must be booked for the Tuesday or Wednesday of qualifiers week; the addressee list must be finalised at the same time as the wildcard announcement; the headline match’s details (opponent, day, time) only add a small reprint to an already produced neutral base.

For teams following the tournament from Milan or abroad we also handle the kit in two waves: a pre–Tournament shipment that arrives on Tuesday or Wednesday of qualifiers week in Rome, and a post–Tournament shipment that returns any unused items to the sponsor’s office for storage until the next season. This split is a frequent ask because the audience of spectators and hospitality guests who actually take a tournament souvenir home is far smaller than the Campo Centrale or Fan Village audience, and most sponsors do not want surplus kit left in Rome after the second Sunday final.

Production and logistics toward the Foro Italico

Before production kicks off we lock master graphic files, per-sponsor and per-recipient quantities, packaging and the named pickup point. The final delivery address is confirmed against the sponsor’s marketing direction calendar and the athlete agency’s logistics lead: the delegation’s reference hotel in Rome, the sponsor’s stand at the Foro Italico for material destined to the hospitality programme, or the sponsor office in Milan or Rome for programmes that stay in Lombardy or Lazio. The ZTL of Rome’s historic centre and the access constraints at the Foro Italico condition the loading slots, which is why most teams opt for early-morning or post–20:00 deliveries, when heavy goods vehicles are again admitted in the central zones of the city.

For an Italian programme routed via Milan, deliveries are consolidated at the hub and shipped to Rome with 24–48-hour windows via BRT, SDA, GLS or DHL Express Italia, by appointment for venues that require phone pre-notice. For programmes above 1,000 pieces we offer appointment delivery with phone pre-notice and, on request, on-site set-up by our staff at the hospitality stand of Campo Centrale or at the Fan Village. For materials that require controlled-environment conditions (FSC-certified paper, small leather goods, Murano glass for numbered limited editions, Faenza ceramics for miniatures) we coordinate climate-controlled transport with specialised partners. For kits destined to international delegations we manage multilingual labelling (Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic) and tamper-evident pouches with a bilingual packing list addressed to the recipient. For clients subject to CSRD reporting (D.Lgs. 125/2024, transposing Directive (EU) 2022/2464) we attach a sustainability data sheet per order with a Scope 3 CO₂e estimate following the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain on the Milan–Rome route and from the production districts involved, with material and leg-level disaggregation useful for the client’s sustainability statement.

All Italian B2B orders are invoiced in EUR at the standard 22% VAT rate (with reduced 4%, 5% and 10% rates applied where the product category allows: publishing, art objects, GI-labelled food) and routed through the Agenzia delle Entrate’s Sistema di Interscambio (SdI) to the buyer’s codice destinatario or PEC address. Corp-Merch.IT is a registered Italian VAT operator, listed on VIES for intra-EU operations, and handles reverse charge, split payment and pubblica-amministrazione self-invoicing under current Italian rules.

Frequently asked questions