Sport has a unique power to bring people together and mobilize society. It is a force that can be used to tackle the growing climate crisis.
Watching the latest Olympic Games awakened a familiar feeling. A certain pride surfaced when Erin Jackson won a gold medal for the United States, and that feeling remained as many other athletes broke records and put in their own sports. Within this place of pride, country and team, there was also a strong sense of unity.
It’s the same welcome feeling I got last week when a close friend revealed he’s a Red Sox fan. As a Yankee fan, we ran around a friendly competition but shared an immense love for the game. I remember a fight I had with an ex after the Patriots beat the Seahawks at the 2015 Super Bowl. In the end, we made up, giving the intense feelings of high stakes, noting that winning and losing was the nature of the game we loved so much.
This approach and reaction to competition and division is quite unique, a phenomenon found in a few places. Our social and political sphere depends on this divide, and it creates powerful and seemingly impenetrable partisanship that often locks our systems into stagnation. We are seeing this division and the subsequent impediment to working with the climate crisis. However, with 79 percent Of Americans who would like the United States to shift to alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, and with more than half of both political parties stating that climate change is a real and current issue that requires action, we are on the will of government intrinsically and financially tied to oil and gas.
However, climate protests and calls appear to be one-sided, often portrayed as a “leftist” issue, and serve to further derail actions taken to solve the problem. However, as it is the crisis with the greatest impact, it should be a topic of concern. With a government and some media groups working to create more division, where can we go towards unification? How about a sports bar on a Sunday afternoon? Or a Thursday night game? Somewhere people gather for one purpose, hoping to watch their team win, without questioning the political ideology of the person next to them. Could a shift in sustainable practices on behalf of sports teams unite and engage residents enough to inform policy later and allow for system changes?
“The nature of sport is so much fun. We are individuals with unique ideas, values, and identities. However, when we come together in large groups – as can be seen in the context of sports teams – we create a collective identity,” says Ashley Lorenz, mental health counselor and head of wellbeing at Plum Health. “The group becomes our safety and becomes a part of our identity. A similar phenomenon can also be seen in sports [fans]. If you support a team, you often refer to your team’s attitude as “we” in the conversation, and we align the team’s successes and failures with yours. “
Around 17.3 million people You can expect to see a broadcast football match, approx 16 million Attend personal matches every season. One million to two million people Listen to one NBA game, about 17 million On the field all season. NASCAR and Major League Baseball boast millions of fans each year as well, with soccer steadily growing in popularity in the United States. With such a wide fan base, the potential for a common perception is high, especially if there is continuity across teams, networks and stadiums.
Professional sports teams can be effective leaders in tackling the climate crisis
At present, few teams in the United States and abroad are actively changing their practices. The Forest Green Rover, the League Two UK Soccer team, is the “world’s greenest” and the first carbon-neutral football club to be certified by the United Nations. They serve vegan food in the stadium, an arena powered by “100% green energy electricity and carbon neutral gas from Ecotricity” that also contains green grass, made possible by rainwater harvesting. The NHL Seattle Kraken Playing in a net carbon arena, using rainwater recycled in the Zamboni River, which runs on electricity rather than fossil fuels. The Philadelphia Eagles They have solar panels that provide power for most of their stadium activities, and the Sacramento Kings harvest solar energy for all their stadium needs.
The Seattle Kraken’s efforts alone are expected to save 50,000 gallons of water in their city annually. These teams do more than just play in a stadium within the city; It also affects the surroundings. While it might be more carbon conscious to split the US map in the middle and switch sections in order to reduce energy expenditure on team travel (where the majority of sports’ carbon footprint stems), a more realistic measure is changing practices at home.
As it turns out, these sustainability efforts have implications for the communities of these teams. Pittsburgh Pirates started an initiative in 2008 called “Let’s go pok. Let’s go to the green environment,who started a recycling program focused on diverting waste from landfills, as well as composting and community outreach efforts to encourage local Pittsburgh residents to engage in sustainable practices. The Seattle Kraken also hosts environmental justice committees, including action steps Fans to take in. Forest Green Rovers helped organize a beach clean-up last May.By engaging with their community, they promote climate education beyond the confines of their playgrounds.
A sign reading Climate Justice Now is placed in protest in front of the Citgo Sign in Kenmore Square during a game between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays on August 10, 2020 at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Billy Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)
While many of these efforts are large and admirable, they often lack urgency, and at times honesty. As of 2022, the hacker is still sponsored popular tyco gas. Arco Southwest, an oil company, and Chevron Sacramento Kings Care. It begs the question: Is oil money funding these green efforts? If yes, then sustainable practices will not be invalidated, per se, particularly when the impact of society is considered, but the idea of morality is raised.
The Forest Green Rovers are sponsored by Ecotricity, “Britain’s greenest energy company,” Candriam, a “global sustainable asset management company,” Player Layer, responsible for their bamboo fashion, and Skoot, a ride-sharing app. Being accredited by the United Nations, Rovers are sustainable on several different levels, including where they get their money, which funds their online and in-stadium advertising. Meaning their audience is sitting in a carbon-neutral plaza and might see a sign for Sheese, a vegan cheese company. On the other side of the world, Kings fans will sit in a 100 percent solar powered stadium and go home to watch a Chevron-sponsored video of their favorite players having conversations in a car in the online series,”Winning leadership.“
Efforts are transforming sustainability practices. We’re seeing this as Olympic players unite with COP26. Watching your favorite team or athlete taking an interest in the planet is sure to influence how fans approach their environmental awareness. “Influential sports teams, players, individuals and organization leaders are under constant scrutiny and scrutiny, which means that their values and actions can influence audiences. So, if you want to inspire activism on climate change, the best place to start is through the players and the sports clubs they represent” , says Lorenz. “If fans see teams they like and support participating in climate activism, they will form connections with their identity and sense of belonging, and that’s how we see the activism begin to grow.”
Franchises have the potential to lower their carbon footprint while influencing their fan base to do the same, but by stopping to turn down money from the biggest proponents of the climate crisis, they are working to underscore parts of the status quo for the same fanbase. This seemingly hidden insistence on following the same path is preventing complete transformations in the sports industry and the world at large.
It can be hard to turn down huge amounts of money from multi-year corporate sponsorships. The New England Patriots must have felt this way when they decided to sign JetBlue for $2 million Sponsorship in 2019, despite being the only NFL team with two private jets. However, switching to full sustainability is more profitable than these franchises think.
Forest Green Rovers increased sponsorship revenue by 50 percent. Other companies working to change their climate practices want to seek partnerships with sports teams that reflect those missions.
“We see brands continually increasingly focusing on ‘environmental, social, and governance in relation to their investments, so sports organizations may lose out on sponsorship revenue if they do not do enough in terms of sustainability, so their ethos does not match the ethos of the brand looking to partner’ Claire Paul, founder and CEO of Sport Positive, an organization that aims to accelerate sustainability in the sports industry. “Conversely, as sports organizations continue to do more in the area of environmental sustainability, they will attract brands that reflect these efforts and may encourage Brands are doing more themselves. The importance of the power of sport in bringing about broader change in other industries and society cannot be underestimated.”
Within that, an all-green team is communicating with their fan base that we are too far in the climate crisis to make room for negotiation.
according to United nations“Athletes and teams can set an example for their supporters. They can use their elevated social standing to educate individuals and communities about climate change, and motivate them to change their lifestyles for the betterment of the planet.”
Avoiding catastrophic and irreversible warming directly benefits sports. Extreme weather patterns, including storms and heat, can cancel matches and put players and fans at risk. Globally, sport contributes the same amount of emissions As a medium-sized country, it makes its responsibility for transparent and effective climate policies tenfold. On an individual level, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics released 3.6 million tons of carbon dioxide alone. About 30 million people followed the events to watch the events. During that time, Exxon Corporation spend $19.3 million on 233 ads washed green. So, when this powerful sense of loneliness began to wash over the millions of people who were rooting for athletes in their own country, an opportunity was missed, that could have been an informative, energizing and turning needle.
By anyone’s calculations, $19.3 million is a lot of money, but according to the calculations of the United Nations Climate Report, the climate crisis is a massive and current problem, which can be combated in part by proper education and advocacy across all industries. Paul continues, “We need sport to be more ambitious than ever, especially those that have the resources to invest in changing systems to harness the power of sport off the field or the field and in communities.”
We simply cannot postpone these changes until next season.
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