Popular shareholding for sports clubs? While general attention is focused on the launch of the new football championship and on the dispute over the new technical commissioner of the national football team, the Chamber is busy evaluating the hypothesis of introducing popular shareholders for sports clubs, those football in a targeted way. Precisely at the end of the works before the summer break, the Culture commission has in fact started the first hearings on this topic.
The bill that starts from the fans
The starting point is a bill presented just a couple of months ago which takes its cue from the "sports management model Italy, more specifically the football one” which – according to the presenters of the bill, first signatory Riccardo Molinari (Lega) – “suffered the negative effects deriving from the persistence of losses in the balance sheets of the majority of sports clubs, as well as from decrease in fan attendance in stadiums as well as the sale of audiovisual broadcasting rights to sporting events".
And hence the hypothesis of “introducing into Italian legislation suitable tools to involve fans in the corporate structure of professional and amateur sports clubs”. In particular through the popular shareholding that it envisages the entry of supporters into the organization chart, as shareholders-investors of the company itself.
The shareholder fans
This governance model would allow supporters of a specific sports club to enter the sphere of ownership spread of the club through a shareholding.
In other words, the fans, through even a modest initial investment, can acquire ownership of shares and quotas of the club and become members, taking part in the sporting and above all economic results of the team.
The companies involved
sports clubs means companies whose exclusive or main purpose is the performance of sporting activities at a competitive level and the production and making available to the public, for a fee, of the related shows and events. The proposal also provides that popularly participated sports clubs and bodies of popular sports participation can be assigned, temporarily or definitively, under the management of local and national public bodies, sports facilities, stadiums, sports halls or similar structures, with the commitment to proceed, with charges and expenses at its sole expense, to the recovery, rehabilitation, improvement, modernization or expansion of such buildings, possibly intended for the construction of multi-sports facilities or in any case suitable for allowing the practice of other sports disciplines in addition to those that were originally carried out there. And for the management of such facilities discounts are assumed.
