Massimo Ferrari, Webuild GM: “Important to have an overall vision of what Italy needs to build infrastructures that can support growth and employment”

"We must focus on modern stadiums as destination places that ensure a positive impact in social, occupational, economic and environmental terms"

Milan, March 25, 2024 - "Webuild is strongly motivated to supporting the development of sport activities in Italy, and at making construction or restructuring interventions of sport facilities possible, as they also are very important for the local economy and can ensure employment growth. It is important to have a vision of Italy's overall needs to build infrastructure that can support growth and employment. We must focus on modern stadiums as destination places that ensure a positive impact in social, occupational, economic, and environmental terms". This is what Webuild GM Massimo Ferrari said in Milan as the round table called "Impianti ed infrastrutture Sportive: attori e processi. L'esperienza delle Olimpiadi Milano-Cortina 2026" (Sport structures and infrastructures: The actors and processes. The Milan-Cortina 2026 experience) organized by ADVANT Ntcm.

"Webuild has a consolidated global track record in the sector and can therefore ensure the most appropriate solutions from a technical and economic-financial perspective, pondering the best cost-benefit ratio for the collective, in social, occupational, economic and environmental terms, but also with regard to energy efficiency," said Ferrari.

Ferrari also spoke of the importance of involving the various actors in the modernizing and construction process of a sport infrastructure, "the public body, called to manage the procedure to make interventions faster and easier, even through the provision of contributions or facilitating processes, like using the structure for commercial purposes and in terms of the nearby areas; the promotor, like Webuild, for example, which draws up the technical-feasibility document and proposes to build the work; the sport companies and associations that use the structures, which can put forward their desires that Webuild can meet; financial institutions, which can guarantee the required resources to build and modernize, thinking in terms of a return on the investment made, and which assert the economic-financial plan".

"It is important to conceive modern sport structures as destination places where the spectator's experience goes well beyond the sport event itself", continued Ferrari. Modern sport structures to be sustainable must be attractive and create adequate revenues both from the sport event and from complementary functions. The choice of the type of stadium and possible complementary functions must be ones that can allow using the structure even in non-match days, therefore considering the stadium a real estate asset with its lines of costs and revenues. The stadium therefore becomes a place of aggregation and in many cases can become a territorial requalification hub".

Ferrari went on to refer to the feasibility study that Webuild is working on to restructure Milan's Meazza Stadium: "A property-owned modern stadium is a priority for both teams, Inter and A.C. Milan. No need to add that the economic investment to build a greenfield stadium is very large. Moreover, road mobility and parking spaces are fundamental elements that one must consider carefully during the site selection, design and management phases. Developing a joint operation, building a stadium used in common by both teams, would allow to share the construction and management costs and the revenues, without any interferences whatsoever with the independent programmes of the teams".

The Webuild Group can boast a long experience in the construction and modernizing works ofstadiums and sport structures. From the prestigious stadiums designed for international events like theAl Bayt Stadiumbuilt for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, to theLia Manoliu National Stadiumin Romania for the UEFA Europa League 2012, up to iconic projects built for the football sector, like theOlympic Stadium in Rome, Italy. The Group has always demonstrated a premium-level commitment in designing anf constructing cutting-edge sports structures.