In L'Aquila, the new football between popular shareholding, crowdfunding and a stadium to be redeveloped

Football as an engine for urban and social regeneration. The L'Aquila 1927 project was rebuilt around this principle. Saved from bankruptcy by the fans at the end of the 2018/19 season, the Abruzzo club has become 'The People's Team'. And this is no mere slogan. In fact, the club's structure was based on a form of diffuse shareholding inspired by the Bayern Munich model, and the organisation focused on debt-free, healthy management, though not without sporting ambition.

L'Aquila's team has won three amateur championships in the last five years and is now set to implement a five-year industrial plan - 'It's not just football' - whose goal is to reach Serie B by 2027, the year of the centenary of the club's foundation. A goal that is combined with the redevelopment of the stadium, the building of a new sports centre and an Academy Centre, thus creating a new city centre dedicated to sport and more. The business plan approved by the company proposes a sustainable model, in which the revenue streams generated by the sports side are supported by those generated by the real estate assets and new business activities. In fact, the new stadium will include bars, restaurants, a museum, multimedia rooms, an indoor theatre, as well as two 11-a-side football pitches, a 5-a-side football pitch, and four padel courts, in order to create additional revenue streams independent of football activities. The Abruzzi club's vision, however, is not limited to football, but aims to create a true multi-sport complex, with volleyball, padel, tennis and five-a-side football teams, which will promote social inclusion in the area.

An area whose entrepreneurial fabric has already given a positive response: in fact, more than 300 sponsorship contracts have been activated. Meanwhile, in view of the transition from the current Serie D to professionalism, with the hoped-for promotion to Serie C in the 2025/26 season, an eqity crowdfunding campaign was launched on 21 March. 'This operation introduces a new financial culture in the L'Aquila club and can contaminate Italian sports clubs,' stresses Francesco Ghirelli, former president of Lega Pro and honorary president of the Abruzzo club since May 2023. Various categories of members are envisaged. Those in category C, who can pay from a minimum share of 250 euro up to 9,999, are entitled to receive profits and the free sale of shares, those in category C can pay from 10,000 euro upwards and are also entitled to vote at the meeting and appoint directors. So far, more than 220,000 euros have been raised from more than 300 investors and there is still more than a month to go until the end of the collection.

A central asset of the crowdfunding campaign is the stadium renovation project - in which the municipality and other stakeholders will also participate - which will begin shortly with the demolition of the first corner, to be regenerated with more welcoming spaces for commercial and health activities. The facility, which today has 6100 seats, will have a capacity of 7500 in the future. Already without fencing towards the pitch and architectural barriers, it will be redeveloped without further land consumption, with energy produced from renewable sources (photovoltaic and geothermal) and according to rules of careful environmental sustainability (from the ban on disposable plastic to dematerialised ticketing). This is the Gran Sasso d'Italia stadium that in 2009 during the dramatic earthquake that struck L'Aquila housed the evacuees in a tent city. All the more reason to turn it into an engine of infrastructural and social modernisation.