{"id":465679,"date":"2026-09-22T15:34:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T13:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/09\/22\/lindustria-dello-sport-porta-8-miliardi-di-euro-in-ue-italia-prima-per-fatturato\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T17:44:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T15:44:25","slug":"the-sports-industry-generates-e8-billion-in-the-eu-with-italy-leading-in-terms-of-turnover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/09\/22\/the-sports-industry-generates-e8-billion-in-the-eu-with-italy-leading-in-terms-of-turnover\/","title":{"rendered":"The sports industry generates \u20ac8 billion in the EU, with Italy leading in terms of turnover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; <strong>In 2023, there were 5,370 European companies producing sports goods<\/strong>, with a total turnover of \u20ac8 billion. According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/eurostat\/web\/products-eurostat-news\/w\/wdn-20260922-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">latest figures published by Eurostat <\/a>\u00a0on the occasion of the <a href=\"https:\/\/sport.ec.europa.eu\/european-week-of-sport\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0European Week of Sport<\/a>,\u00a0Italy is the leading EU country, with \u20ac2.1 billion in turnover and\u00a0448 manufacturers.<\/p>\n<p>The sector employs 1.8 million people in the European Union, accounting for 0.9 per cent of total employment. Between 2024 and 2025,\u00a0<strong>employees in the sector rose by 8.1 per cent<\/strong>, an increase of around 150,000 people. This figure includes both those working in sports-related activities and those in sports-related professions outside the sector. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-465730\" src=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-790x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"790\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-790x1024.jpg 790w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-231x300.jpg 231w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-768x995.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-1185x1536.jpg 1185w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-1580x2048.jpg 1580w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-750x972.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-1140x1478.jpg 1140w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/EU-Sport_ing-scaled.jpg 1975w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 790px) 100vw, 790px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>However, the sector remains predominantly male:<\/strong> in 2025, men accounted for 56.3 per cent of employees, compared with 43.7 per cent for women. In Italy, the gap is even more pronounced, with men accounting for around 58 per cent of those employed in sport. At the other end of the scale is Estonia, where women make up 53.8 per cent, while in Belgium men account for 69.9 per cent.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"><strong>The European sports sector is also a particularly young one:<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/eurostat\/statistics-explained\/SEPDF\/cache\/44953.pdf?v=2730320055858178\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0 36.2 per cent of the workforce are<\/a> aged between 15 and 29, accounting for more than double the proportion of young people in total employment, which stands at 17.1 per cent.<\/span>\u00a0The proportion exceeds 50 per cent in Finland (53.4 per cent) and 40 per cent in seven other countries, while it falls to 14.4 per cent in Lithuania. <strong>University education also shows a significant gender imbalance:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/eurostat\/documents\/4031688\/22214315\/KS-01-25-036-EN-N.pdf\/dff11a51-6613-a73d-edc6-2e20580acc09?download=true&amp;t=1757945468615&amp;version=1.0&amp;utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in higher education<\/a> \u2013 universities, vocational courses \u2013 there are around 269,000 students studying sport, and for every five men there are just two women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; In 2023, there were 5,370 European companies producing sports goods, with a total turnover of \u20ac8 billion. According to the latest figures published by Eurostat \u00a0on the occasion of the \u00a0European Week of Sport,\u00a0Italy is the leading EU country, with \u20ac2.1 billion in turnover and\u00a0448 manufacturers. The sector employs 1.8 million people in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7896,"featured_media":465664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25774,25717],"tags":[35812,31425,25744,35813,27192],"class_list":["post-465679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-brief","category-sports","tag-articoli-sportivi","tag-eurostat-en-2","tag-industry-en","tag-settimana-europea-dello-sport","tag-sport-2-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7896"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465679"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465735,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465679\/revisions\/465735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}