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Thought Piece: Professional Sport’s Greatest Threat and Biggest Opportunity
COVID-19 brought professional sport to its knees, but just as it finally pulls itself back to its feet an even greater challenge lies ahead. With twenty-one of the last twenty-two years the hottest on record, extinction rates 8-100 times greater than a world without humans and arctic warming accelerating at a rate four times higher than the rest of the world, the climate crisis is professional sports greatest challenge but, I believe, also its greatest opportunity.
Sport is responsible for 350 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses annually, roughly equivalent to the emissions of Spain or Poland. Running events in stadiums, which are often old, is extremely energy intensive. Teams frequently rely on aviation to travel to their events, with an impact eclipsed by fan travel which can be responsible for around 90% of a sports team’s emissions. At the global level, stadium waste is an enormous problem. Sixty tonnes of waste were produced this year at this year’s Superbowl alone, about the weight of six elephants. Sport clearly has a hugely negative impact on the environment. With governments around the world committing to net zero emissions within the next twenty-five years, these kind of numbers do not bode well for sport. Unfortunately, as demonstrated so clearly during the global pandemic, sport is non-essential to society. When push comes to shove, the emissions a country has spare will be spent on hospitals and schools, not in stadiums. Sports organisations cannot ignore this issue – in the coming transition to a net zero economy sport must either change its environmental impact by design or by disaster, and COVID-19 showed us only too clearly how professional sport fares in times of disaster.
Sport needs to start tackling these problems and reducing these numbers. Stadiums must be upgraded with better insulation, more airtightness, heating controls, and efficient appliances. Renewable energy must be used to power stadiums. Public transport to the stadium must be put on, food options must be considered, water usage reduced, recycling systems and waste management put in place. Where possible re-use must be the preferred option. But even all of this is not enough – reducing these numbers is important, but sport cannot efficiency its way to zero.
How, then, can sport not just ‘be less bad’ but instead strive to have a positive impact on the world, to regenerate? Well, sport already positively impacts the world. The Hong Kong Sevens represents one of the clearest examples of this, uniting different cultures and nationalities for a weekend of exhilaration of the type only rugby sevens can produce. In an increasingly polarising world sport has an important role to play in bringing people together. Fans ride elation and despair side by side, but ultimately it is drama without consequence, a way to feel deeply in the moment but leave it all in the stadium. Further to this, a recent report on global rugby participation found that it contributed US$8.4 billion in value to society through increased confidence, greater employability and a reduction in mental health and health-related issues. Hong Kong China Rugby uses rugby as a vehicle to promote social inclusion through teaching, bringing special needs schools and mainstream schools together, running deaf rugby programs and specifically targeting discrimination and isolation. Socially, sport regenerates – it gives out more than it takes in.
For sport to thrive in a net zero economy, it must regenerate environmentally too. I believe sport can make itself invaluable in the upcoming transition through fan engagement. Governments are taking on plans and targets of a scale never attempted before and are, so far, failing to deliver on them at the required speed. Scientists are shouting from the rooftops, but no-one is listening. This is where the opportunity lies for sport. In the UK, Marcus Rashford, a Manchester United footballer, started a campaign that led to the UK government providing £400 million of funding to support low-income families with the cost of food. When sportspeople talk, they are listened to. Indeed, a top American university study found that 49% of global influence belongs to sportspeople and sports organisations. This is a platform that is all too often commercialised but seldom used to deliver the messages that as society that we need to get across. There is a disconnect – governments who are failing to get people to listen and sports teams who are being listened to but not speaking.
As governments move away from fossil fuels, they need society to change with them. Solar panels, electric vehicles, battery storage and heat pumps are examples of what might be required in a future powered by renewable electricity – but there is a lack of trust and no desire to make the switch simply because the government says to do so. The UK aims to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028, but last year installed only 72,000. Governments should be putting them into local rugby clubs, promoting them at sports matches, helping sports stars install them, letting people see them in action. Once these technologies are seen, understood, and trusted there is much more chance of achieving the uptake required. This is one example of the opportunity that sport has in this space. The way in which people consume sport has changed. Instead of 90 minutes once a week, fans watch Tik Toks, Netflix series, Instagram posts. Sport’s connection with its fans is much more personal than it ever has been, and I believe it is one of the only connections that can influence the change needed at the scale and pace needed.
As a highly emitting non-essential sector the transition to a net zero economy does not look like an easy ride for sport, one from which there may be no recovery. I believe, however, that sport also has its greatest opportunity in this space. Sport is positioned to be the most important tool to governments around the world achieving what currently seems impossible. Instead of being left behind, sport can regenerate. It can create social good, influence environmental change and help society navigate the most difficult transition that it has ever come up against.
