While citizens and companies all over Europe fear the upcoming winter and heat and electricity bills that will go up due to the EU’s economic sanctions on Russia, it seems that sports, in this case, volleyball, will suffer too.
According to Valeria Benedetti from the Dal 15 al 25 blog, there’s a rising concern about the Italian Women’s Volleyball Championship. The Serie A launched the alarm on the energy costs of the sports halls that have skyrocketed. A situation that, after the damage caused by the pandemic, which influenced professional teams very much, now comes from the sanctions the European Union imposed on Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine and puts at serious risk the possibility for clubs to be able to keep sports facilities open in 2022-23. These are truly enormous inconveniences for a top-level volleyball in a span of only two years.
Most of the halls of Serie A sides are managed by the Municipalities, which, having to guarantee essential services to citizens, could cause the inconvenience of expensive bills to fall on the league organization, reducing the availability of the sports halls even with the possibility of closures in the winter months. For the clubs, which already undertake investments for the partial use of the facilities, involving thousands of young people every day, it would become impossible to guarantee the normal conduct of activities with only the box office earnings of the Serie A teams.
