Round-up #10
Women's World Cup 2023, extreme weather, matchday programmes, and much more
It’s been a busy fortnight since the last round-up including two posts in this newsletter:
A look at the new Football Association of England Sustainability Strategy, why it’s important, what it covers and why more detail and implementation is needed. It also looked at the new strategy from the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Spanish football’s governing body.
The Game Changer Sponsorship Pledge that fans, athletes and sports teams can make. It aims to help bring an end to sponsorship by high-carbon, gambling and alcohol industries. This was a guest post by Michael Hardy, the Director of the initiative.
As ever if you have suggestions or proposals for future guest posts please get in touch.
Extreme Weather
In a week of extreme weather around the world:
Severe weather sparked fan chaos at Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami introduction.
This video shows the wild conditions leading to the MLS match between Colorado Rapids and Portland Timbers being postponed on 6th July.
AFC Bournemouth players were out training in 40° temperatures in Marbella, Spain.
Pre-season friendlies this coming weekend for Leicester and Spurs in Bangkok and Manchester City in Tokyo could see a heat index of 38°C / 100°F at kick-off.
Women’s World Cup 2023
What are the lessons from broken environmental promise in Qatar? The article expertly takes an in-depth look at a range of key issues. The final sentence illustrates why more transparency is needed.
The biggest-ever player-led climate action received widespread coverage, demonstrating players’ concerns about the environment. A key policy objective of the action is to inspire governing bodies to make carbon a key criterion for future tournaments. For more on that point see the Euro 2024 section below. It also highlighted some of the limitations of offsetting.
Insights
This report on Green Football Weekend 2023 has a lot of useful insights and in-depth analysis of the actions fans took, their perceptions, the reception from clubs and their feedback. A key challenge for 2024 will be to “connect to the probable larger number of fans who are concerned about climate but are not acting or sharing that they are acting”.
Travel
"There is so much travel involved, so many flights. A lot of footballers and football teams take private jets everywhere.... I think private jets should be banned."
Gary Lineker speaking at an event at Wimbledon Tennis tournament alongside other sportspeople
This tweet, from academic Walker J Ross, in regard to tennis players flying made me stop and think that it could well apply to football too.
On fan travel - and venturing beyond football again - Sky has launched a campaign to encourage fans to ‘travel green’ to upcoming sports events. Responses included how fans’ travel choices are affected by decisions on timing, locations and number of matches. Governing bodies and broadcasters can have an essential role in effecting these, and can help make sustainable travel options easier and more available for fans.
It also matters who is providing these messages too. For this separate Liftshare campaign on sustainable fan travel to cricket matches they have teamed up with … [checks notes] … Esso.
Energy
Nottingham Forest have extended their sustainability partnership with E.ON. There is an interesting idea mentioned about “the formation of a new ‘Sustainability Council’ to help the club enhance its approach” (note, Eintracht Frankfurt have a sustainability board with a Nobel Prize winner on it!)
The Football Association of Wales has partnered with Welsh renewable energy developer Bute Energy who will become the official sponsor of the FAW Women’s Cup and FAW Girls’ Cup.
Campaigners in Cameroon called for the Confederation of African Football to break the contract that binds African football to oil company, TotalEnergies.
“I really want to see more sweat, less oil.” said Fatih Birol, Executive Director of International Energy Agency, when asked about oil money in football.
EURO 2024
The EURO 2024 ESG Strategy has just been published. On first look, it’s well-structured and has a broad scope. It also follows on from positive UEFA communication noted in the previous round-up here. However, it could do with more numbers in important places. For instance, what is the carbon footprint expected to be? How much funding will be in the climate fund?
How sustainable will the tournament be? asks this article in DW, and also points to the need for concrete and specific measures.
This further demonstrates the need for climate goals to be a key criterion for decisions on future tournaments, from the outset. Alongside this, it would be very helpful to see a standard format, or set of principles, for carbon reporting for all international football tournaments.
Sponsors
A group of high-profile celebrities called for an end to Barclays sponsorship of Wimbledon tennis tournament saying “Barclays is financing and profiting from climate chaos, and accepting a sponsorship deal from them is an endorsement of these actions.” Barclays also has a number of football sponsorships.
Sustainability As The New Norm In Sports: 17 Sport And Change NOW’s Sport Sponsors Climate Pledge. This project, coming out of France, focuses on working with companies such as Accor, EDF and Orange that sponsor events and organisations. As part of their involvement, these companies will then put climate-related conditions on their financial investments in sports entities.
Engaging young people
Brentford FC Community Sports Trust produced this video which has local schoolchildren giving their views as part of a Protect the Planet Challenge.
Football for Future has been working with Arsenal and Year 8/9 girls to explore their creativity through football and the arts.
Football Ecologie France have been working with young trainees from FC Girondins de Bordeaux.
More …
Jennifer Morgan, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, Federal Foreign Office of Germany helped launch the Football for Forests app. It allows fans or organisations to choose a team and make donations. Funds will be used to restore tropical forests.
As part of Dundee United’s sustainability drive matchday programmes will now be free to view for all supporters online.
World Cup 2022: Two legal perspectives on the Swiss Regulator finding against FIFA on carbon neutrality claims are here and here
That’s Round-up #10 done and its made it to double figures! I’m still learning as I go along with this, so all comments, corrections and suggestions are super-useful. Until next time …
Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
@fbandclimate footballandclimatechange@gmail.com