Italy’s sports industry is worth $22 billion, accounts for 1.3% of GDP and employs 400,000 people

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How much is Italian sport worth? How much wealth does it create in terms of the industrial sector? What social benefits can it generate? These are the questions that the Sport Report 2023 seeks to answer, the first systematic study of the Italian sports industry promoted by the Sport Credit and the Institute for Sport and Health. The GDP of sport is quantified at around 22 billion euros in 2022, with a contribution of 1.3% to the national GDP, which implies the employment of 400,000 workers, thanks to the presence of more than 15,000 private companies, around 82,000 non-profit organizations and nearly 900,000 volunteers.

Sports Industry

The core sector, namely facility management, sports clubs, gyms and other activities (such as the promotion of sports events), contributes 3.4 billion dollars of added value to the sector, of which 79% is generated by private companies, compared to 21% for public administrations and private non-profit institutions. More than 10 billion of sports GDP comes from closely related activities, such as the production and sale of sports equipment and clothing, and another 8.4 billion comes from sectors related to sports in a broader sense (such as sports media, tourism and transport services, and the medical industry). Therefore, 84% of the market value comes from activated satellite activities, confirming the multiplication capacity of the sports business.

Elements of weakness

The 2023 Sports Report also reflects on the weaknesses of the sports system, especially the energy crisis caused by the pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine, which “burned” nearly $4 billion of GDP and marked the complete collapse of the sports system. The energy crisis has damaged the financial balance of many institutions and has been severely affected by the increase in electricity and gas bills, which accounted for 45% of total fixed costs at the peak of prices.

The report highlights that the impact of the pandemic, as well as the energy shocks linked to international geopolitical tensions, have confronted public institutions and sports systems with the need to initiate a phase of market restructuring and renewal through three main interventions: investments, sports culture and entrepreneurship, aimed at enhancing the great potential of sport for social and economic impact”.

facility

One of the issues that has not been resolved is that of infrastructure, where a North-South divide still exists. In fact, only 26% of the country’s factories are located in the South, while 44% of the total number of factories in the country were built in the 70s and 80s and are largely inefficient in terms of economic and environmental sustainability. 8% of the factories are not operational, a figure that reaches 20% in some regions of the South. The main challenge is to make the sports infrastructure network more efficient and extensive, intercepting the megatrends related to the green and digital transition and allocating intervention priorities to the southern Italian regions.