Juventus Arena: False Hope or a New Dawn

Juventus Arena: False Hope or a New Dawn
By Brigate Rossonere

The much praised and almost complete Juventus Arena is set to house its first game for Juventus on the 8th of September 2011. It is set to be a momentous day for Italian football as it will be the first time in recent history that a club will play an official match at its own stadium. No doubt it will be a beautiful stadium and the viewing experience will be the best in Italy and it will have an electrical atmosphere to match.

The question I ask and attempt to answer is, just how much will this stadium do for Juventus? Is it being marketed by the heads at Juventus in a way to give the supporters a false sense of hope of a beautiful future, a deceitful project that aims to trick people into coming back to the stadium or is it genuinely something that will overturn the misfortune of a fallen giant.

Every fan of Calcio knows just how detrimental it is for a club not to own its own stadium. Not only does a club not have a functional stadium to use and to rent out for other purposes, it has to pay the council rent to use the stadium; a fee that come sometimes amount to millions of dollars for top stadia. This is simply unheard of outside Italy.

At the moment the FIGC, CONI and Italian councils all seem to be against the building and privatization of new stadia in Italy. They enjoy a regular stream of income from football clubs and get to keep the stadium at the end of each season. They can also hire out the stadium to various functions such as music concerts and the like leaving the stadium with a destroyed pitch. When a club wants to renovate and upgrade the stadium they must first go through the council and through all the problems that go with that.

Furthermore, there is a law now being pushed to be passed by the government, one that would change the current waiting time to build stadiums from EIGHT YEARS to only one year, would make the privatization of stadiums easier and make credit to build stadiums more accessible. The councils are doing everything they can to stop this. They do not want to be left with an outdated stadium that is of no use to them.

The Juventus Arena gives hope at least to those clubs that currently have plans for new stadia and want to push them through as quickly as possible. These clubs include Palermo and Cagliari, who are closest to building new stadia, Inter and Roma who both have solid plans to work off and various other smaller clubs who all wish to increase their clubs efficiency through increase matchday revenue.

Enough about Calcio, what will this stadium to for Juventus and will it live up to its initial promise?

Ok I think we are all well aware that while clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid are pulling in figures of around 150m euro's in matchday revenue alone, the table toppers Milan and fierce rivals Inter have to settle for around 30-40m euro's, Juve sit even lower with a ridiculously low amount of around 15m euro's. This figure has been blamed on many things but is mostly due to the fact that the current stadium they play in is not owned by them, has a capacity of 27k and the quality of the viewing from the stands is ridiculously low.

The new stadium fixes all three of these issues. Due to Juventus successfully taking out a loan to finance the stadium the will be able to own it in its entirety. It will have a very fitting capacity of 40,000 which is big enough for a city like Turin, small enough to not have the problems of the Delle Alpi and to keep up competition for seats which can only force prices upwards and the stand will be closer to the pitch that what even Arsenal or Bayern fans experience.

This tells us a few things. One is that even though the Juventus board decided against lifting their current prices that they charge for games at the Olimpico, they will definitely rise in the future and hence lift matchday revenue. The attendences will definitely be higher, subscriptions to season tickets currently sits at around 23,000 and is expected to reach somewhere between 30,000-35,000 by the seasons start. This alone is higher than the capacity of the Olimpico and again will be a reason that matchday revenue will increase. The more enjoyable viewing experience from the fact that the stands are closer to the pitch, the chairs are more comfortable and the increased safety will all bring not only more Juve fans to the games, but their wives and children too, for whom perhaps it was too dangerous to bring to the stadium in the past.

Matchday revenue will rise, and very much so. It will help Juventus buy increasing total revenue and will bring out a better image for the club.

The next good thing that the planners of the stadium have done is to build it into a complex which includes cafe's and shopping centres which will make it the focal point of Turin, a place where people come and enjoy in each others company. It will be a centre of modern architecture and sport. These things help boost revenue to the club through the ability to better sell merchandise at the facilities and to be able to rent out land and building to these shops and cafe's. Again, this too will increase revenue.

The next thing is the effect that this will have on the players. I cannot talk from the experience of having played in front of 40,000 fans myself, but I do know that when I play for the reserves of my local league team, there is a difference in playing in front of 10 people and 500 people. I simply cannot imagine this magnified by 10 times. It will also increase the appeal of the club and its ability to bring in world class players that have a choice in which club they will move to.

On the flip side, some people have realized that this could only increase the total revenue of Juventus FC by maybe 15 or 20% which isn't a huge figure. The team could stay at a low level of quality that fans have been unfortunate enough to have to endure and could not only force people that don't have season tickets to not purchase them, but to not renew their current ones in the future. Yes the stadium is modern and big enough for Juventus, but in the end the capacity is only 40,000. Half of the San Siro. It is not big enough to host the finals or European competitions which would be a huge boost to revenue and is not big enough, at least in my opinion, to host truly huge games.

Yes the stadium is big enough for Turin, big is it big enough for what people from Turin want to see Juventus become? I am not too sure...

The stadium is something big and surely a turning point in the future of Juventus, but maybe the effect it will have on the club is a little over expected.

This is my first attempt at a blog-style article and so will accept any and all criticize and use it to improve myself as a writer. I do realize the article written is of low quality but that is exactly why I wrote it, to improve my writing. Just do keep in mind that I do realize the article struggles in some parts.

Also hope to hear your thoughts on the issue.

hey, you are a truly fabulous writer...i have been following your posts for quite sometime and i like your enthusiasm for serie a... i am a rossoneri too :-)

just keep posting informative posts

+1

Please do feature this in our section, though it is in turmoil atm.

Imo, it's a false hope because everyone on the Skyscraper City forum thinks the stadium is ruined because of the cables

Great article man... and well written.

Quick question, i tried to find info on something i read somewhere a while back, namely that they can increase the capacity of 41,000 with another 15,000 seats. Is this true and where can i find info about it?

Oh your back? So you broke your word...?

sciacca wrote:Oh your back? So you broke your word...?

:lol!: right to the point

Sciacca dont be mean

Anyways good writing for 1st timer Brigate.....

I'm not being mean I was just curious.

Anyways...

Very good read. I won't take anything bad away from what he did.

MacPhisto/MirrorBallMan wrote:Imo, it's a false hope because everyone on the Skyscraper City forum thinks the stadium is ruined because of the cables

The cables will soon be removed. A respect journalist said it in an interview as quoted in Gazzetta a week or two ago but it will take some time and money. A redraft is necessary but the good part is that it is possible.

vanharouva wrote:Quick question, i tried to find info on something i read somewhere a while back, namely that they can increase the capacity of 41,000 with another 15,000 seats. Is this true and where can i find info about it?

I also heard this but it is a rumor. They specifically made the seating capacity what it is. The rumor was that another (third) tier could be added. A third tier with only 15,000 seats? It would be the first of its kind... I think it is important to remember that Turin is a fairly small city and Juventus at the Delle Alpi could only manage average attendances of around 45,000 even at the height of their success.

sciacca wrote:Oh your back? So you broke your word...?

Thanks for your insightful input to the topic, I really don't know how this could have been considered a thread without it. I mean, every thread on this forum now has a useless post count boosting post from you.

Once again, thank you so much and I hope you can reply to this with an equally exhilarating post as your first.

Brigate Rossonere wrote:

sciacca wrote:Oh your back? So you broke your word...?

Thanks for your insightful input to the topic, I really don't know how this could have been considered a thread without it. I mean, every thread on this forum now has a useless post count boosting post from you.

Once again, thank you so much and I hope you can reply to this with an equally exhilarating post as your first.

"Very good read. I won't take anything bad away from what he did. "

Very well-written article. Kudos.

I particularly agree with this part:

"It is not big enough to host the finals or European competitions which would be a huge boost to revenue and is not big enough, at least in my opinion, to host truly huge games."

Sadly, this is true. Hosting a Champions League final brings in a lot of money, but we'll never have that honor with a 40,000 seater stadium.

But in the end, Turin is a small city and the a 40k stadium will never fill up during Serie A games, so I don't see the point of building a 70,000 seater stadium when we know that only a third of it will be filled.

And some friendly advice: Cut down on using "OK" and "I think". Now I've never blogged before, but I think being more decisive in your way of writing makes it a better article. But you did one hell of a job anyway :flower:.

Turin is not as small as you're making it sound, the second biggest city in Italy it boasts a million people within the city limits and another 2 within the metropolitan area.

Either way great article, it was an informative read and I enjoyed it

7amood11 wrote:And some friendly advice: Cut down on using "OK" and "I think". Now I've never blogged before, but I think being more decisive in your way of writing makes it a better article. But you did one hell of a job anyway :flower:.

I re-read my article and see exactly what you mean. Thanks so much for the advice.

I write my first article, Birgate writes his first article. Watch out Carlo Garganese and Kris Voakes, the future is now

milanista99 wrote:I write my first article, Birgate writes his first article. Watch out Carlo Garganese and Kris Voakes, the future is now

Think about it, one day we could be the people that get laughed at on the goal/troll.com forums.

If anybody thinks this is any good and worth a repost to the Juventus Stadium Thread, be my guest. I would but am currently banned from their section.

Brigate Rossonere wrote:If anybody thinks this is any good and worth a repost to the Juventus Stadium Thread, be my guest. I would but am currently banned from their section.

Above anything, you spent a lot of time and effort on the article so it absolutely deserves to be posted there.

Stadio. <3