Sustainability is still a topic quite distant from the world of Italian football. Juventus, with its Allianz Stadium, represents an exception. Starting from the 2019/2020 season, it began the process of disclosing its 'carbon footprint'. The initial tangible step of the environmental journey commenced in the 2020/2021 season with the offsetting of direct emissions under the organisation’s control (classified as 'Scope 1') and indirect emissions related to electricity, steam, or heat production (classified as 'Scope 2'), by compensating CO₂ emissions through funding emission reduction projects using carbon credits.
Felice Fabrizio, People Sustainability manager of the club, emphasises that “since July 2023, we have had an organisational change. The ESG team has become part of the People and Culture management, which is significant because it is the result of strategic thinking; we must first invest in promoting sustainability criteria among our staff so that all colleagues, each in their own small way, contribute to achieving a sustainability goal.”
From the next season, the bar will be raised significantly as 'Scope 3' emissions will also be measured, which “include a whole other dimension of emissions particularly linked to fan mobility that we have not measured until now”, continues Fabrizio. “We have resolved to implement this from the next season, as we will be covered by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), a new European law that applies to Juventus as a listed company, due to our employee count and turnover, which require even more stringent reporting standards.”
The movement of supporters, for a club like Juventus, which has a fanbase spread across the entire national territory, is a problem that is far from easy to solve and must necessarily involve an agreement with the local public transport system.
Francesco Gianello, the Director of Facilities Management at Juventus, highlights that “we have a range of projects underway, and we hope to finalise some of them by the close of the season. Surely one approach could be the one already adopted in Turin during the ATP tennis tournament, which is to automatically give free public transport access to spectators who buy an event ticket. An initiative that offers advantages not only from an environmental perspective but also from the overall experience, as it facilitates full immersion in the city.”
“At this stage, we're starting to look into how we handle the stadium zone on match days”, he adds. The stadium was not intended to be a 40,000-seater but rather a 67,000-seater (the Allianz Stadium was constructed on the site previously occupied by the Delle Alpi stadium, which had over a third more capacity). Therefore, it has ample spaces, both indoors and outdoors, and a significant number of parking spaces. A critical aspect is the local public transport, which currently brings an insignificant percentage of supporters to the stadium, less than 5%.
The club is currently in contact with the local public transport company to bring this percentage to 15% as soon as possible and plan the creation of “preferential lanes that allow the outflow from the stadium of public transport and taxis, preventing them from being blocked in ordinary traffic. Already back in 2019, the club engaged a third-party company with expertise in mobility for large events to establish a zone around the stadium accessible only to those with parking privileges. We are getting there. This is an area where a parking space is assured and secured by acquiring a ticket on the Internet even five minutes before the match begins.”
And there is more. In the mid-term period, Juventus aims to create zones for the charging of scooters and electric bikes, and a peripheral area where taxis can move freely and enter the road network with guaranteed access.
But energy saving also depends on choices that seem smaller. “In 2016 we had one of the most powerful indoor lighting systems but it used halide lamps”, recalls Gianello. “Then I saw a fantastic LED system at Chelsea's stadium in London”, and despite our stadium being new and just five years old, the decision was made to transition to LED. “We have killed two birds with one stone because today we have an 'entertainment arena' and at the same time we have reduced consumption by about 30%, also significantly lowering maintenance costs. Once the bowl, the structure, was completed, we moved on to the internal areas of the stadium. We are now on the brink of being able to call ourselves a fully LED-equipped stadium.”