The Allianz Stadium in Turin was a fitting venue to host the ESSMA Summit 2021.
How refreshing was it to travel to Turin and be there to celebrate ESSMA’s 25th anniversary with fellow industry peers? ESSMA (the European Stadium and Safety Management Association) was formed in 1996 with the aim of uniting and furthering the professional development of European stadium managers. From the outset, it recognised the limitations of national borders and the value of international collaboration in sharing best practice. It now incorporates over 350 stadiums and its annual showcase summit gathered together 250 of the industry’s finest in Juventus’ home stadium. It is a real tribute to the ESSMA team that they successfully delivered an in-person international event whilst some restrictions remained in place.
It was inevitable that COVID would not only partly restrict the numbers present, but also run through some of the summit’s content. Nonetheless, the event continued to be primarily forward-looking. So, what were the key themes?
The DFL present a case study on innovation trials across its member clubs. (Source: ESSMA LinkedIn).
The Power of Collaboration
The ESSMA Summit 2021 demonstrated the willingness of its members to be open and exchange ideas in a supportive environment. Sharing best practice has always been part of ESSMA’s mission, but this event saw a real desire to present new ideas and developments to the industry and in return for the industry to engage and follow-up.
The DFL shared a fascinating case study where all 36 clubs from the top two tiers in Germany had been involved in selecting a series of innovation projects to trial. These trials ranged across several areas from back-of-house management to digital content. It was not only the trials themselves that provided potential learnings, but the fact that the DFL was able to co-ordinate these for the benefit all. This saved the clubs the hassle having to deal with various approaches from potential suppliers on an individual basis. This is surely a model that would make sense for most of the major leagues.
ESSMA itself offers a panel of experts to whom members can ask questions with the philosophy that most questions have been asked and answered before within its network. It also announced that it had established links with the US-based Stadium Managers Association to broaden its network and facilitate collaboration beyond Europe.
Whilst ESSMA, like most industry-based organisations, relies on suppliers to sponsor and support its programme of events, the principle of collaboration even extends to supplier engagement. The suppliers who attend are very much part of the event, engaging in its content and offering insights accordingly. Their interaction with event is smart-selling rather than hard-selling with the focus on adding value and problem solving.
A presentation from the GOALS Project at the ESSMA Summit 2021 (Source: ESSMA LinkedIn)
Sustainability continues to be a key thread
The ESSMA Summit 2021 took place whilst COP26 was unfolding in Glasgow, and it was no surprise that the sessions on sustainability were some of the best-attended of the event.
The GOALS Project shared some insights from measuring the environmental footprint of football matches. The studies undertaken at a large club stadium went beyond focussing purely on carbon and considered wider environmental factors such as resource and energy use. It concluded that carbon accounted for 31% of the environmental footprint of a matchday with energy consumption and water use making significant contributions to the overall environmental footprint. Food and beverages can drive water consumption with a stadium using enough water to fill 26 Olympic-size swimming pools each matchday! Nevertheless, a single matchday can produce 63 tonnes of carbon and 2,500 trees would be required to offset this!
The Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam was once more at the forefront of sustainable best practice. Having already established themselves as a clean energy venue using wind and solar sources and storing this in re-purposed 3MW car batteries, they set out their vision to become the hub of a smart energy grid. This will allow neighbouring households to be active participants in this grid and even out the peaks and troughs in generation and demand. In return the stadium will truly embed itself in the immediate local community.
Later Populous shared the design for the re-development Stade de la Meinau in Strasbourg with fuselages from A340 aircraft being used in the creation of a breathable, light enhancing façade. Surely a headline-grabbing example of the circular economy on a grand scale!
The Allianz Stadium Turin hosts the UEFA Women’s Champions League
Multi-use stadiums and mixed-use developments will become standard
As part of a mastermind session, ESSMA revealed the findings from the analysis of their stadium development database.
Two clear trends are apparent:
· Firstly, multi-use stadiums are increasingly prevalent with non-matchday retail and leisure facilities the most common form of multi-use. This session was delivered the morning after the participants had watched an enthralling match between Juventus and Wolfsburg in the Women’s Champion League- another example of multi-use where more than one team uses the Allianz Stadium.
· Secondly, stadium developments (and re-developments) are increasingly being commissioned as part of a wider mixed-use development. This means the stadium must have a wider purpose than a pure sports venue and should complement and add value to the community that surrounds it. Examples of a recent, current, and planned mixed-use development are the Brentford Community Stadium, Hollywood Park in Los Angeles incorporating the SoFi Stadium and the New Stade Lois Nicollin in Montpellier.
These trends confirm our expectations that future stadium developments need to fully justify both the financial and natural resources that they will use, and that they have a wider responsibility to positively impact their surroundings and work for, and with, their local communities.
So, a very happy 25th Anniversary to ESSMA who can be proud of their achievements. But what will the next quarter of a century bring for the stadium industry?
Here’s three trends I expect to see emerge:
· Like other technologies, I expect to see the multi-use concept developed to such an extent that stadiums will merge with other buildings and consequently the boundaries between sports venue, leisure destination and (often) residential area will be blurred. Whilst this will present challenges for larger stadiums especially in tournament mode, for smaller club venues this will become increasingly common and should help establish the club’s place at the heart of its community.
· Whilst ESSMA has doner sterling work in Europe, if we are to see a levelling up around the world in terms of stadium infrastructure and management, a global stadium industry network is needed. The collaboration between ESSMA and the Stadium Managers Association is, I think, just the start of things moving in that direction.
· As stadium developments become increasingly accountable for the resources that they will consume, I think we will see fewer specific tournament-driven stadium developments. This will require mega-event organisers to find innovative ways of working with existing venues or even new venues whose design priorities will be driven by legacy use rather than tournament requirements.
In any case I expect that organisations like ESSMA will be here to support and show-case best practice whatever the future holds…
Enjoying a pre-summit tour of the San Siro Stadium.
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