RAI Sport chief Paolo Petrecca resigns after Olympics commentary errors

Italy’s state broadcaster RAI has shown how public-service media can combine monopoly-era entitlement with the production discipline of a small-town amateur theater.

According to The Guardian, Paolo Petrecca, director of Rai Sport, resigned after his error-filled live commentary during the Winter Olympics opening ceremony triggered protests inside the broadcaster. Petrecca reportedly welcomed viewers to Rome’s Stadio Olimpico rather than Milan’s San Siro, mistook Italian actor Matilda De Angelis for Mariah Carey, and confused IOC president Kirsty Coventry with Laura Mattarella, daughter of Italy’s president.

The commentary also included remarks that did not age well in real time: Spanish athletes were described as “always very hot,” while Chinese athletes were said to “naturally … have phones in their hands,” The Guardian reports. Petrecca had already been barred from presenting the closing ceremony.

RAI journalists responded with the kind of internal revolt that only a protected institution can afford: Rai Sport staff withheld bylines from Olympics coverage and planned a three-day strike after the Games, while journalists across RAI’s news networks withdrew bylines in solidarity.

Opposition politicians turned the fiasco into a proxy war over governance. The Guardian notes that critics have framed Petrecca’s appointment as an example of political affiliation trumping merit, accusing RAI of rightwing bias under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni—hence the nickname “TeleMeloni.” Stefano Graziano of the centre-left Democratic party called Petrecca an “emblem” of this politicization and said the resignation came “too late.”

That leaves the more interesting question: why a taxpayer-backed broadcaster still insists on “central-planned” live production—high-stakes, single point of failure, personality-driven—when the distribution war has already been won by platforms that can clip, correct, and repackage instantly.

A private outlet that repeatedly embarrassed itself at flagship events would face the market’s version of a strike: audiences leave, advertisers flee, and the brand’s cost of capital rises. A state broadcaster instead gets parliamentary oversight committees, internal unions, and the comforting fiction that the problem is personnel rather than incentives.

Petrecca is expected to be replaced by Marco Lollobrigida, a veteran sports presenter, The Guardian reports. Italy will presumably continue to treat the symptom—swap the talking head—while keeping the underlying model: political patronage layered onto a protected distribution regime, then marketed to the public as “service.”