Impacts of Climate Change on Sports

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Sustainability and sports. There are not many talks or disclosures to gauge the Sustainability (environmental issues in particular) impact on the sport sector. However, the influence of sports reaches out to a wide range of society across regions, age groups and genders, and provides a united social platform for more sustainable behaviours. Sports organisations are encouraged to be more progressive in becoming more sustainable to deepen connections with current and new fans while increasing business performance.

Environmental impacts should really be one of the focus areas for certain sports, such as outdoor winter sports and surfing. These sports are directly affected by climate change. Organisers will face the difficulties to host sporting events such as the Winter Olympics due to the decreased winter periods, and the changes in ocean tides and waves could force current surfing venues to be relocated.

Climate change may also resulted to increase in rainfall that could lead to flooding, and this has already affected cricket events in England and India. The increasing occurrence of intense wildfires that caused detrimental air quality had caused disruptions to the Australian Open in early 2020 and also caused cancellation of baseball games in Seattle. These are just some examples of how climate change are limiting the existing sporting events and the trend is likely to remain.

The business financial implications due to these cancellations are severe. For instance, the infamous Hurricane Harvey had forced the displacement of Houston sport business and clubs needed to participate in extended road games due to the fact that it was just not possible to host games especially for fans to crowd the stadiums.

Apart from that, the locations of the sporting facilities and stadiums are at risks of climate change, especially at coastal areas. The coastal areas are threatened by rising ocean sea levels and have high likelihood of facilities flooding with damaging effect.

Based on what has been mentioned so far, it is quite vivid to see how detrimental environmental i.e. climate change issues impose on sports, to both organisers, sport clubs and also the fans. 

Sports organisations’ environmental impact assessments tend to lack certain important aspects. Normally, sports organisations would only look at short impact on the facility or sporting event itself. They also need to focus on the externalities that poses direct environmental impacts that include carbon-producing transportation of teams and fans, food consumption and waste production.

It is also observed that sports organisations have not reached out enough to external stakeholders and experts on environmental initiatives. Like many other businesses, this is probably due to the lack of awareness and direction from the organisations’ management on the overall value from the initiatives.

It might be a surprise to some to know that fans are actually keen on and even participate in reducing sporting events’ and their own environmental footprints during a game. This is evident in environmental awareness campaigns that advocate fans to increase the use of mass transit, increase waste recovery and purchase carbon offsets to mitigate personal impacts when attending a sporting event.

Events surveys are helpful to formulate and assess the social and financial returns on investment of the said campaigns. The change of behavior to be more environmentally friendly does not only occur during a sporting event, but it leads to day to day behavior changes in sustainable living of individuals and local communities.

Sports organisers could also benefit financially from these initiatives and investments. Environmental initiatives are attractive for certain categories of fans such as the millennial.  They view these initiatives and investments to uplift their sports organisers’ brand perceptions and will drive towards lucrative returns in merchandise sales. The advocacy on environmental sustainability by organisers can be benefitted to promote a social norms of sustainable living that can lead to obtaining corporate sponsorships by other sustainable organisations.

Sport organisations should take the first approach of assessing their environmental impacts before begin to invest in initiatives to gain financial and social returns.

The Seattle Mariners had conducted its energy audits and facility upgrades. It was found that it has managed to save significant amount of energy and cost. Another example is the Ohio State University Athletics Department that extended its waste management programme of its facilities to the surrounding community to achieve zero waste. Some also extended their initiatives to the fans such as the Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Sounders offset their teams’ carbon emission through carbon offsetting programmes including facility operations, team travel and fan travel.

Another energy cut saving initiatives is seen at Levi Stadium of San Francisco 49ers. The organisations are consuming renewable energy featuring solar panels. This is also seen at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam that features battery arrays that are capable in storing enough energy to meet the consumption of an entire event.

Another interesting example is from a football club in England. The Forrest Green Rovers had come up with a design to build a stadium that will be completely made out of sustainably sourced wood. The team’s current facilities are powered by 100% renewable energy. The facilities’ concessionaires only features plant-based food items. All of these efforts play a substantial role in minimizing its environmental impact.

 

All views and opinions expressed on this site are by the author and do not represent any particular entity or organisation