The presentation seminar of the observatory took place

In the presence of an interested public, the presentation seminar of the Sport and Sustainability Observatory of the Department of Business Sciences of the University of Bologna was held.

The seminar opened with institutional greetings from the department director, Prof. Angelo Paletta, who underlined that sport must be able to read the changes taking place to outline its future.

The President of the university sports committee - Prof. Alessandro Bortolotti - underlined the extraordinary power of sport as a tool for social sustainability. This circumstance requires careful prevention of the risks of generating adverse effects on participants in youth sports activities.

Next, Prof. Maurizio Marano presented the observatory, its activity, and its strengths, which are linked in particular to the combination of academic and professional skills of qualified sports executives and sustainability managers.

Cristiana Pace, CEO of Enovation Consulting, spoke from Rome, underlining that the observatory is an opportunity to bring best practices on sustainability into Italian sport that have long been developed and spread in Great Britain, adding that it is the right time to accelerate the path of change in Italian sport.

Fabrizio D'Angelo, sustainability manager of the IOC, illustrated the organizational transformation of the International Olympic Committee in light of the entry of sustainability into its strategies and the diversity of intervention plans. The Paris Olympics have set themselves challenging objectives regarding social and environmental sustainability with numerous projects that will make this edition of the games extremely significant progress in the history of the Olympic movement.

Giovanni Esposito, general secretary of the Badminton Federation and a great scholar of sustainability in Italian sport, underlined the importance that the path towards sustainability of the sports organization sees a strong involvement of the internal staff and the need for it to spread in Italian sport the role of sustainability manager with specialized skills.

Clara Simonini, sustainability manager of the Bologna Football Club, illustrated the significant progress that the club is progressively making thanks to the constant commitment of the entire organization and the clear will of the owners and top management. In the face of many projects already successfully implemented, new challenges always arise on the path to continuous improvement of sustainability performance, as is typical in a path that is necessarily made up of many stages.

Rodolfo Giovenzana presented a sporting experience organized in Auschwitz for the education of young people, as essentially all youth sporting activity should be. The culture of social sustainability must encourage the diffusion of a model of sports association which, by practising a specific discipline, focuses its mission on the cultural education of the new generations through sport.

Finally, the closing was curated by Professor Giovanna Russo, who, from the perspective of the sociology of cultural processes, underlined the importance of the multidisciplinary dimension in observing the complex phenomenon of sustainability in sport.