Staging domestic matches overseas
Climate concerns ahead of an important UEFA meeting
UEFA’s Executive Committee will meet in Tirana, Albania on the 11th September. On the table will be proposals relating to plans for two competitive domestic club league matches to be staged overseas.
This post takes a look at where we are now with the proposals, the opposition to them, the climate issues that the proposals lead to, and what’s next. It suggests that relocating fixtures overseas would be bad for the environment and for many other reasons, and the proposals should not go ahead.
Where we are now
Two matches are currently being proposed to be played overseas. Firstly, Spanish football’s Villarreal vs Barcelona scheduled for 20th December, proposed to be played in Miami. And, secondly, Italian football’s AC Milan vs Como, scheduled for 8th February, and proposed to be played in Perth, Australia.
The proposals have already been supported by football’s governing bodies in both Spain and Italy. The Italian Serie A says this will introduce “the excellence of Italian football to new audiences, strengthening the competitiveness of the system, and generating resources that benefit the entire movement”.1
Elsewhere the Head of the Spanish LaLiga says that “There are thousands of fans around the world — including Europeans — who have the right to see their teams play live at least once.” At the same time most commentators see the proposals as very commercially focussed decisions for the clubs and leagues, particularly to help them compete with the English Premier League.
Although a handful of club cup games have previously gone ahead overseas (the finals of Italian and Spanish cup tournaments) it would be a first for domestic league matches to take place overseas. For these games to go ahead approval is needed by the national football governing bodies (which has already happened), followed by UEFA (which meets next week), and then FIFA and the governing bodies where the games would be played.
Opposition to the proposals
While these proposals are supported by their respective leagues, a large and diverse range of voices are speaking out against them. This includes supporters’ groups for Villarreal and Barcelona, who in a strongly worded joint statement with the Spanish supporters body FASFE, have expressed their “absolute, total and firm opposition to the relocation of the match outside of Spain … Football is, to a much greater extent and much earlier, a social and cultural event than a branch of the entertainment industry and attempting to eradicate it from the community that created and sustains it since its inception is an attack we cannot stand idly by”.
In addition, Football Supporters Europe (the FSE) has expressed its unequivocal opposition, saying it is appalled and that this would strike “at the heart of the relationship between fans and their teams, breaking vital links between clubs and their communities”.
Alongside this the FSE, with the Independent Supporters Council (of North America) and the national supporters groups of Spain and Australia have written to FIFA expressing outright opposition. The statement includes in it a warning the proposals would “Generate significant environmental and logistical burdens”2.
Separately, in an official statement Real Madrid has said that this would upset competitive balance and “If this proposal [moving the Villarreal vs Barcelona game overseas] were to be carried out, its consequences would be so serious that it would be a turning point in the world of football.”
Elsewhere, The European Union Commissioner for Sport has said “European competitions must be played in Europe … I believe that clubs owe most of their success to their loyal fans & local communities … Moving competitions abroad isn’t innovation, it’s betrayal.” Also, in the coming days the European Parliament will debate what it calls the ‘European Sports Model’ including the adoption of a (non-binding) resolution that “Calls on the sports governing bodies to prevent domestic competition matches from being played abroad”.
This shows that there are many, strong, reasons for opposing the proposals. It is also important to look in more detail at the climate-related issues these proposals raise, of which three stand out.
Emissions
Firstly, and most obviously, there would be the extra emissions that these matches overseas would generate. This comes at a time when urgent cuts to emissions are needed, and the European Commission is proposing a new emissions-cutting target of 90% by 2040 for European countries.
Primarily, this increase in emissions would be from the teams, staff and fans flying long distances to and from the games. AC Milan and Como’s round-trips to Perth would clock up some 17,000 miles or more.
While many of the people attending an overseas match may live locally to the stadiums that the matches take place in, a number of supporters based in the clubs home cities and countries would highly likely fly to watch their team too. The scale at which this might happen, and the size of the extra climate impacts are unknown as no assessment has been made so far by clubs or governing bodies. However it is a very safe bet that the climate impacts of these games would be higher than them being held domestically, and that this increase would likely be significant given the amount of flying involved.
This would be even more so if fan travel to these overseas games were to be incentivised. Villarreal, a club with 19,500 season-ticket holders, has formally stated that “All Villarreal CF season-ticket holders this season will be able to fly to Miami and watch the match against FC Barcelona free of charge”.
This does not appear to be some off-the-cuff idea solely from Villarreal - Liverpool’s owner put forward a similar proposal for fans last year. Further domestic matches held overseas could see tens or hundreds of thousands of extra overseas flights and much further pollution.
Extreme Weather
Secondly, the proposed AC Milan vs Como in Perth, Australia also highlights the issue of extreme weather in football, and how it needs to be addressed further.
The game is expected to be played on 8th February, and weather records show that the daily temperatures in Perth on that day could be in excess of 30°C (over 20°C warmer than Milan on the same day).
UEFA works within FIFA guidelines on heat policy, while “Football Australia’s Heat Policy provides for a more conservative policy approach [than] that used by FIFA.”3
Football Australia also identifies the importance of acclimatisation and “allowing your body to adapt to hot and humid environments over the course of several days or weeks”. Both AC Milan and Como have fixtures scheduled the week before and after this proposed game.
Elsewhere, Football West, the governing body for football in West Australia, says “If the temperature at kick off is forecast to be … 36 degrees Celsius or higher for Senior Matches, Football West will reschedule a Competition Match.”
The potential health and climate impacts on players and fans of this match or others seems to have received no attention so far. This also leaves open important questions such as, which set of heat policy rules would this game be played under? Which rules are the most appropriate? And, is a more consistent approach needed in football?
Governance
Finally, the proposals also highlight structural climate gaps in football’s governance. UEFA has a sustainability strategy, made some sustainability updates to its rules, provided tools and guidance to clubs, and in particular, taken forward a raft of initiatives in relation to its EURO tournaments. At the same time it appears to have no requirement, policy or approach in place for considering the climate impacts of decisions at meetings of its key strategic body - the UEFA Executive Committee - even if the decisions it makes might have an environmental impact. This means its quite possible the upcoming UEFA Executive Committee meeting will not consider climate impacts as part of discussions and decisions on domestic games being played overseas.
This also highlights that UEFA may sometimes not consider climate issues in some of its important strategic decisions that could nevertheless have important climate impacts4. A recent example of this is UEFA’s decision to expand its European club tournaments, which as the BBC has noted, came with “an increasing impact on the planet”, but which appears to have been decided on blind to the climate impacts.
Climate governance gaps also extend to FIFA governance. If, next week, UEFA is to approve these games being played overseas, they would then need to be approved by FIFA too.
Current FIFA rules do not allow for domestic club games to be staged overseas. That said, FIFA set up a working group last year to look at a new framework for ‘out-of-territory games’ which it said at the time will report in the coming months. Its terms of reference include a list of “non-exhaustive factors” it will take into account in its considerations. These do not include sustainability, effectively removing the issue from its decision-making process on future domestic games overseas5.
This also appears to leaves open the possibility that the working group could report in the near future, and that FIFA Council could change its rules in relation to domestic games being played overseas, before them making a decision on these particular games. (That said, I’d welcome any clarifications as to whether that is the case, or an approval of changes in rules requires a full FIFA Congress meeting of all member associations, or some other procedure).
What next?
It’s not clear what exactly that UEFA will be discussing and deciding on at the Tirana meeting next week, and many questions remain. These include: will it be approval of these two specific matches? Will it be deciding on the principles and/or governance around approving domestic club matches to be played overseas? What will it ask FIFA to consider? Will its decisions set a precedent?
Writing for Eurosport, Philippe Auclair says that sources have said “UEFA's Executive Committee members themselves are "in the dark" and do not know whether any decisions have already been made internally, or what the trend is within the body.”
Elsewhere, while the Premier League CEO has said that “we don't have any plans to play matches abroad”, the Sport Unlocked podcast notes that this does not mean that proposals could not come to the table in the future. Relatedly, Matt Slater asks in The Athletic “does anyone really think a competition largely owned by Americans will not want to play games closer to home if La Liga, Serie A et al prove you can take the show on the road and the locals will turn up? … If either of those games takes place at their intended venues, every league will be booking flights and packing their bags”. In recent days the Football Supporters’ Association in England has said that the new independent football regulator for English men’s football has the power to intervene on the issue, if the wording in the legislation creating the regulator is interpreted robustly.
Football Espana has speculated “If Barcelona-Villarreal succeeds in Miami, what’s to stop a Manchester United-Liverpool match in Tokyo or a Bayern Munich-Borussia Dortmund clash in Shanghai?”. Also, is it so much of a stretch to imagine sponsors wanting to tie sponsorship deals to games played where they are headquartered, or where their key audiences are based? Or for the many airline sponsors in football to strongly push long-distance flights to any club games that are played overseas?
On the proposals, UEFA’s President has recently said “I don’t think it’s a good thing”, but despite this also said, “as much as we [UEFA] checked legally, we don’t have much space here if the federations agree, and both [Spanish and Italian] federations agreed”. UEFA say their next steps would be to “open this discussion also with [world football governing body] FIFA and with all the federations”.
At the same time, there are clearly some attempts to downplay the significance of UEFA’s decision on these two games. The UEFA President has also said “OK, if it’s an exception, fine; if there’s a reason, fine”. Javier Tebas, President of LaLiga has said “let’s put things in perspective: we are talking about 1 match out of 380”, and Italy’s Serie A made a strikingly similar point in a statement when saying “Talking about betrayal over a single game, out of a total of 380 Serie A matches, seems excessive”.
To my eyes, it seems very hard to balance statements about these just being one game, with statements from the same organisations about wanting to reach new audiences. To achieve those goals would need a continuing and deepening effort, with more games overseas over time, rather than a one-off. There is also a clear potential for this to lead to a race between leagues to go quicker and go bigger than others.
Along similar lines, the FSE and partner supporter groups say in their letter to FIFA
“Those behind the proposals claim they are only interested in a one-off event, a claim we reject. If permitted, this would open a Pandora’s box of disarray for football. Short-sighted commercial interests cannot take precedent over protecting domestic football and the communities our clubs grew out of.”
Staging domestic club games overseas would cause significant and unnecessary increases in football-related pollution at a time when more climate action is needed. For this reason, and the many other compelling reasons others have stated, the proposals should be blocked. In addition, the situation also highlights important questions that need to be addressed about climate governance in football, and how the game deals with extreme weather.
Fran
P.s. There are new developments and statements coming thick and fast at the moment in relation to these proposals, so keep an eye out on this newsletter’s socials for news on those.
P.p.s. This was a particularly (and needlessly?) complex one to write, so all comments, clarifications, corrections, and communication tips are more than welcome - either here in the comments or direct by email.
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Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
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In addition, AC Milan’s stadium will host the Winter Olympics ceremony a couple of days before the AC Milan vs Como game was scheduled to be played - though why the game could not be rescheduled or held somewhere closer than Perth is not clear.
Many other national football supporter associations, and club-based supporter groups have also expressed their opposition, with too many to note here individually.
The 2022/23 UEFA Annual Report said that UEFA was “working on having regulations in place to safeguard players and fans” in relation to heat, though no follow-up on that has since been published.
While UEFA’s latest strategy says that it “recognises that the decisions we make have an impact on the environment”, the statement is focussed on applying to ‘UEFA’s operations and events’ By this they mean UEFA-organised games played at neutral grounds, such as its EURO finals, and the final game in each of its European club tournaments, (plus its own operations). This focus appears to exclude the huge number of other games in its own European club tournaments, qualification matches for it national team tournaments, and other decisions it makes regarding domestic club football that may impact their emissions.
A recent example, is the vastly expanded Club World Cup, which had no climate impact assessment.
Such an insightful piece Fran, thank you!
Very well written and easy to read! Thank you Fran.
The topic of the day is, again, a proof that football governing bodies, leagues' presidents and club owners only care about one thing: making more money out of it. They'll then find a commercial justification, saying something like: we need more money to run the club. Whereas they're spending billions on players. If the world of football is not capable of reflecting on his greediness, it will just explode one day. And above all, them being greedy does not allow for environmental thinking. They're all about greenwashing. As you very well presented it, UEFA adopting sustainability strategy but expanding its European club competitions at the same time. It makes no sense. Well, I guess it does but only for business matters.