daniel chigunwe
It is time for the sports industry to begin asking itself the hard questions about climate change.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that fossil fuels are the primary cause of climate change, a new report from British think tank the New Weather Institute shows that the sports industry is receiving US$5,6 billion in sponsorship money from the fossil fuel industry.
The report, titled “Dirty Money – How Fossil Fuel Sponsors are Polluting Sport” was published after the hottest summer on record and coincides with unprecedented flooding that has devastated Central Europe and West and Central Africa.
It highlights the 205 active fossil fuel sponsorship deals in the sports sector, and lists the major culprits.
Soccer (football), motorsports, rugby union, and golf are the sports with the most fossil fuel-related sponsorship deals. The biggest spenders are Aramco (US$1,3 billion), Ineos (US$777 million), Shell ($470 million), and TotalEnergies (US$340 million).
Soccer fans will recognise Ineos, the British petrochemical group owned by Jim Ratcliffe that now owns a stake in Manchester United.
TotalEnergies was a sponsor of the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France, and the 2024 Africa Cup of Nations, and Aramco sponsors the F1 Saudi Grand Prix and has a global partnership with FIFA and a sponsorship agreement with CONCACAF.
The sports industry’s acceptance of oil and gas sponsorship money is perplexing, yet simple to explain.
Fossil fuels stand in contrast to everything sports stand for and require to exist.
They are detrimental to human health — just the air pollution from their burning kills over 5 million people per year. They alter the very environments in which sports are played.
They make sports more difficult and dangerous to participate in. Yet in the short-term, the fossil fuel industry offers huge sums of money that sports organisations can reinvest or profit from. In other words, the sports industry is mortgaging its very existence for cash in hand.
Sadly, this short-sightedness is validating fossil fuel companies’ social license to operate, which is exactly what they are seeking when they make this investment. By accepting this investment, sports organisations are complicit in oil and gas sports-washing.
Statista stats shows that the sports industry is worth an estimated US$471 billion. That figure is projected to rise to US$680 billion by the time the Summer Olympics come to Los Angeles in 2028.
Sports are no longer merely a physical test, nor are they just entertainment for the masses, they have become a lucrative investment, one which owners are not eager to lose.
Nevertheless, the acceleration of climate change will erode humans’ ability to partake in and watch live sports, thereby reducing the value of the sports industry.
The current estimation of the sports industry’s economic value does not factor in the potential havoc climate change will wreak on the international sports sector. But there are already signs of what is to come.
The Economist recently ran an exposé on the global increase in temperature and how it is affecting athletes’ ability to compete. In it, they quote men’s tennis star Daniil Medvedev saying “one player gonna die,” during last summer’s US Open.
The piece also highlighted the fact that during this summer’s Open players vomited, put bags of ice around their necks and heads, and had hoses blowing cold air down their shirts. — Forbes.
Bongani Ndlovu