Game On or Game Over? Sport Positive Summit and BBC Green Sport Awards highlight opportunities and challenges for sport and its net zero ambitions

This year’s Sport Positive Summit and the BBC Green Sport Awards showcased an array of sustainability innovations and initiatives, but also illustrated the need for more bold and collective action if sport is to reach its numerous net zero targets.

Published

October 25, 2023

Jonathan Dyson

Correspondent

Innovation

“Can the growth of sport ever be compatible with true environmental sustainability commitments?”

This question was posed to delegates and a panel of speakers at the conclusion of the fourth edition of the Sport Positive Summit, held earlier this month at The Oval cricket ground in London.¹ The annual conference brings together sports stakeholders from across the world and provides a platform for the industry to boost its sustainability efforts, including targets to reach net zero.

Intriguingly, before the question about sport’s expansion was debated by speakers, 56% of attendees responded ‘no’, and 44% ‘yes’, but after discussion of the topic, 74% said ‘no’, with 22% saying 'yes’ and 4% ‘don’t know.’

The question was examined by the sports writer and broadcaster David Goldblatt, who said ‘no’, SailGP’s chief purpose officer, Fiona Morgan, who responded ‘yes’, and former rugby player Martin Offiah, who said ‘it depends’ – pointing out that the possibility of marrying growth with sustainability commitments varies greatly across different sports organisations and events.

David Goldblatt was particularly strident in his views and called for a reduction in the amount of professional sport globally, including either putting a halt to the Olympics or at the very least pausing the event for the next eight years to find a way of addressing challenges posed in particular by the volume of air travel involved.

He also suggested that a major rethink of the FIFA World Cup was required, with new ways of encouraging more local fans to attend so that fewer overseas supporters travelled to the tournament.

Goldblatt pointed to studies which have found that over 85% of the emissions of major sporting events are caused by the travel of participants, spectators and others². He also noted that further difficulties are occurring as most sports organisations’ plans to reach net zero depend to varying degrees on carbon offsetting.

In response, Fiona Morgan conceded that sports organisations face major difficulties around sustainability, but argued that growth can still be achieved in line with true environmental commitments if the right innovations and partnerships can be found.

‍SailGP has set a target of being 100% powered by clean energy on-shore and on-water by 2025 and in the 2022/23 season it delivered five events that were fully powered by clean energy, up from one in 2021/22.³ However, Morgan admitted that with the majority of the fans attending SailGP events either being local or watching remotely, it faces less of a challenge compared with other sports around the impact of fan travel.

The other question posed in the debate centred on the role of sponsors from the fossil fuel sector such as oil companies, with 82% of audience members saying that sport should disengage from such sponsorship, 14% saying ‘no’ and 4% ‘don’t know’.

The final day of the event coincided with FIFA’s announcement that the 2030 World Cup will be held across three continents and six countries⁴, and the following day the 2023 Cricket World Cup – with Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco among the lead sponsors – got underway in India with the first of 48 matches to be played at ten different stadiums over almost seven weeks.⁵

^‍These developments – highlighting sport’s relentless growth and its close ties to the burning of fossil fuels – illustrated once again the deep challenges facing the industry.

The Sport Positive Summit had showcased an array of initiatives from across the sport sector designed to reduce its impact and ultimately reach net zero.

These included plans to make Amsterdam’s Johan Cruijff Arena – the home of Dutch football giants Ajax – net positive by 2030, through innovations such as a biodigester located next to the stadium that will convert food waste into energy for use by the venue, as well as efforts to reduce the use of cars by fans visiting the stadium.⁶

In cricket, details were provided of the UK’s first Go Green game, the England v New Zealand T20 held at Edgbaston in Birmingham in September, when the 25,000-seater stadium was run entirely off wind, hydro and solar power, and free shuttle buses were used by supporters to reach the venue, with car parks at the ground closed.⁷ Plans for further similar events are in the works.

Other achievements were highlighted at the BBC Green Sport Awards, held the evening before the summit, at Broadcasting House. Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins was unveiled as Athlete of the Year – recognised for his ‘Cricket for Climate Foundation’, which is working on a number of projects across Australia, including installing solar panels at 15 local cricket clubs, with Cummins’ own club in New South Wales the first to do so.⁸

The Young Athlete of the Year was English Schools cross-country champion Innes FitzGerald, who declined the chance to compete in this year's World Championships in Australia. In a letter to British Athletics, the 17-year-old said her decision was based on her concern about the impact of flying at a time when people around the world are suffering from the effects of climate change.⁹

^‍Innes spoke powerfully at the Sport Positive Summit about the difficulty of making her decision, and the “overwhelming” amount of support she received – but noted that her other teammates decided to make the trip.

The continuing drive for athletes to fulfil their ambitions and sport’s seemingly unstoppable growth have clearly created deep tensions across the industry about the credibility of its green ambitions, and this helped explain why many attendees, while encouraged by the numerous initiatives highlighted over the three days, were left with a sense that bolder – and, crucially, more collective action – was required for sport to truly become more sustainable.

During the debate that concluded the summit, one delegate suggested a potential solution was a carbon budget system that dictated the number of events or matches each sport could have. While such an idea would be hard to implement, it was notable that a week on from the summit, Sport England said the level of funding it provides to organisations could be impacted depending on whether they have climate action plans in place.¹⁰

As sport faces growing calls to reduce its impact, as well as feeling the effects of climate change itself, similar moves may emerge over the coming years as the pressure on the industry to find credible solutions intensifies.