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Whilst in England and Germany complete roofing is standard many fans in Italy, Spain and the US are provided no protection against the weather conditions.
The stadium of the Basque football club Athletic Club Bilbao, opened in 2013, required further building measures only three years later. The focal point of the work was the roof expansion as the existing construction in San Mamés didn’t offer fans sufficient protection. Especially the spectators in the lower rows towards the south and east occasionally got soaked by rain, partly also because of the rough winds common for the region. In total up to 7,000 spectators were affected. In April 2016 the club decided to modify the existing roof at a price point of around 12 million Euros. There was a discussion about a retractable roof but it was dropped due to high costs. The roof expansion was undertaken during the 2016 summer off-season.
The comfort for the spectators is today only one of many arguments in favour of roofing: the steel frames carry tons of loads including floodlights, sound systems, surveillance cameras, WLAN and mobile communications antennas and the respective kilometres of cables. On top of that solar arrays on roofs have become a source of income for many stadiums. Next to respective static inspections the roof has become an issue for acoustics specialists as the construction and material can impact the sound inside as well as the noise emissions.
Among the currently 95 stadiums playing across the five European top leagues 75.8 % have complete roofing. The two leading leagues are the English Premier League and the German Bundesliga. In England all 20 stadiums have a roof, in Germany merely the Jonathan-Heimes-Stadion am Böllenfalltor (Darmstadt) is the only one with partial roofing. Once of the biggest projects over the next years will be carried out in the Mercedes-Benz Arena, the home of the current 2. Bundesliga team VfB Stuttgart. As a report revealed the foil of polyester membrane has become so porous that a new roof is inevitable. During the 2017 off-season the 2.7 million Euro expensive action is to be taken.
Whilst in England and Germany nearly all spectators are protected the fans in Italy and Spain are frequently exposed to the weather conditions. The stadiums in the Primera Division are to 55 percent fully roofed and in the Italian Serie A it is only 47 percent. Both leagues have the disadvantage that the respective stadium landscapes are mostly outdated. Even stadiums of top clubs such as Atlético Madrid and FC Barcelona only have partial roofing. Both clubs want to change this. Atlético will be moving from the 2017-18 season into the fully roofed Estadio La Peineta – until 2022 Barça is modernising Camp Nou and on completion it will have full roofing.
An option that opens the expanded usage scenarios and marketing potentials is a retractable roof. Since the construction of the Amsterdam ArenA, the Principality Stadium (Millennium Stadium) or the arena of Schalke 04 there have been numerous successor projects across Europe. The Bundesliga has two stadiums with retractable roofs (VELTINS-Arena and Commerzbank-Arena), in France the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille has such a system. England, Italy and Spain have not yet adopted this approach. (Stadiaworld, 02.01.2017)
You can find the whole article including a table of new installed hybrid turfs in 2016 in the current Stadionwelt special issue SPORTS VENUES 2017.
Information and ordering options for SPORTS VENUES 2017
