The Exor chairman took up a seat next to the head coach for the traditional "family" fixture at the Allianz Stadium, an experience he later described as unlike anything he had done before.
"I have a strong relationship with Spalletti, I couldn't turn down the experience of watching a match with the coach on the bench," Elkann told Sky Sport at half-time. "I've never done it before, I enjoyed it a lot, I saw the game from a different perspective and got to hear the coach's thoughts on the match directly."
Spalletti was equally taken with the arrangement, joking afterwards that Elkann's presence had briefly turned back the clock on his own touchline habits.
"With Elkann on the bench it was wonderful, I went back to being an assistant," the head coach said with a smile when asked about having the Juventus president alongside him.
"He's got great intelligence and asked some sharp questions, I tried to be a bit vague."
Elkann used the interview to offer his first public assessment of Giovanni Carnevali's arrival in the club's boardroom.
"Giovanni is a great professional, he knows football and Italian football extremely well," he said. "Juventus are currently pushing forward with a strengthening process that has to start from Italy and respect the club's identity, an identity that fits very well with Giovanni Carnevali's abilities and his ambitions, which are the same as the club's — to pursue victory."
Asked directly whether the Scudetto or the Europa League represented realistic targets for the season ahead, Elkann was careful to frame Juventus's ambitions within the context of an ongoing rebuild.
"Juventus's ambition will always be to win. This year we have a series of major commitments in Italy and in Europe and it's important to push forward with them," he said. "Bearing in mind that football works in cycles, and today we're in a rebuilding phase. What matters is doing this rebuild well, we're all determined to carry it forward, and that's also what our supporters are asking of us."
The friendly itself finished 2-0 to the senior side, though the second half was never played after fans invaded the pitch in the traditional pre-season pitch invasion that has become a fixture of the Allianz Stadium event in recent years.