(Finance) – “Sport Report 2023 is a rich report, which highlights both the impact of the sports industry on the GDP and the social return on investments. For us and for Sport and Health it is essential to evaluate how much resources, public or private, return to society in terms of well-being”. As Beniamino Quintieri, president of the Institute for Sports Credit (Ics), on the sidelines of the presentation of Sport Report 2023, the first system research on the Italian sports industry promoted by the Institute for Sports Credit and by Sport and Health, in the presence of the Minister for Sport and Youth, Andrea Abodi. The research aims to highlight the economic relevance and ability to generate additional social benefits of the Sport sector.
The Sports sector has reached a significant economic dimension in Italy equal to approximately 22 billion euroswith a contribution to the national GDP of1.3%. It confirms itself as a real industry, with a powerful leverage effect in terms of economic repercussions, estimated at 2.2x and a significant impact on employment. The sector has around 400 thousand employees active along the extended sports supply chain, which sees the presence of over 15 thousand private companies and around 82 thousand non-profit organisations.
Redeveloping and enhancing the sports building heritage means improving the use of the facilities and at the same time combating the rate of sedentary lifestyle: more than 38 million Italians do not practice sport and only a quarter of the population carries out sporting activities continuously. Systemic action is necessary for the construction of a culture of sport, through multi-sectoral policies in a synergistic perspective between public and private.
The Sports Report 2023 also offers a reflection also on the weak elements of the sports system, highlighted by the pandemic and the energy crisis triggered by the war between Russia and Ukraine. Covid has sent almost 4 billion of GDP up in smoke, marking a drastic collapse in investments (-76% in 2020, with a partial recovery in 2021), while the energy crisis has compromised the financial balance of many structures, heavily penalized by increase in electricity and gas bills which, at the peaks of prices, came to account for up to 45% of total fixed costs.
“The mark left by the pandemic and the impact of energy shocks connected to international geopolitical tensions – underlines the report – put public institutions and the sports system faced with the need to start a phase of restructuring and renewal of the market through three main lines of intervention: investments, sports culture and entrepreneurship, with the aim of enhancing the great potential for social and economic impact of sport”.
Among the unresolved problems is the infrastructural one with the continuing gap between north and south. In fact, only 26% of the national plants are located in the South, while 44% of the country’s total was built in the 70s and 80s, largely inefficient in terms of economic and environmental sustainability. environmental. 8% of the plants are not functioning, a figure which in some areas of the South reaches 20%. The main challenge is to make the sports infrastructure network more efficient and widespread, intercepting the megatrends linked to the green and digital transition and assigning intervention priorities to the areas of Southern Italy.
(Photo: kinkate)