How Sports Teams Are Turning Fans Into Eco Allies
It is, of course, impossible to discuss climate action in sports without addressing the elephant in the room: Professional athletic leagues are considerable greenhouse gas emitters.
A business-as-usual professional league involves long-distance flights; sponsorships from high-carbon businesses like airlines, fossil fuel companies, and cryptocurrencies; and the mass consumption and disposal of gear and merchandise. The global soccer industry alone has a carbon footprint equal to Austria, per a report by New Weather Institute published this year.
Put plainly, Hershkowitz said, the sports industry isn’t just a consumer—“it’s an amplifier of the consumption message.”
Dr. Jules Boykoff, a former professional soccer player who now studies sports and politics at Pacific University, said that sports must reduce their emissions if they are serious about galvanizing climate action. “All too often, there’s a customary chasm between word and deed,” Boykoff said, “between the claims around sustainability that teams and leagues make and the reality of their actual practices.”
Some athletes, like Kelvin Beachum, are calling on sports leagues to minimize their climate impact. The 13-year National Football League veteran recently joined the Ocean Conservancy’s Protect Where We Play initiative, which aims to propel environmental protection through sports, music, and the arts.
“I’m an offensive lineman, so I know protection better than most,” Beachum quipped.
Beachum sees a world where all teams incorporate sustainability into their day-to-day operations. He pointed to Climate Pledge Arena, home to the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, which is powered by 100% renewable energy, offers free local public transit with every ticket, and recycles rainwater to create the ice in its rink.
Scottish rugby player Jamie Farndale has also used his platform—and his master’s degree in sustainable leadership from Cambridge University—to advance climate action. The retired international captain’s graduate school thesis showed how low-carbon technologies could spread as “social contagions” through social collectives—sports fandoms being one of the largest of their kind in modern society. He’s now applying that research to his full-time work leading sustainability initiatives, including upending climate-polluting sponsorship models, for Hong Kong China Rugby. “If we want to spread uptake of these technologies that we need for net zero, that we’re not spreading fast enough, sport is the best connector,” Farndale said.