Fossil Fuel Companies Spend $5.6 Billion To Advertise in Sports
by Vitas Carosella · ForbesIt 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 $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 ($1.3 billion), Ineos ($777 million), Shell ($470 million), and TotalEnergies ($340 million).
Soccer fans will recognize 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 organizations can reinvest or profit from. In other words, the sports industry is mortgaging its very existence for cash in hand.
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Sadly, this shortsightedness 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 organizations are complicit in oil and gas sportswashing.
The Consequences
Statista stats shows that the sports industry is worth an estimated $471 billion. That figure is projected to rise to $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.
Prior to this summer’s Olympics in Paris, the second “Rings of Fire” report was published by the British Association for Sustainable Sport (BASIS). That showed how climate in Paris has changed in the last 100 years, from the 1924 Paris games until the ones just passed. The average temperature has risen by 2.7℃. Like at the U.S. Open athletes at the Olympics vomited, required extreme measures to cool down and recover. Luckily there were few life-threating moments at the Paris Olympics, but there is a sense that every major sporting event could now jeopardize athlete health. Sam Mattis, two-time U.S. track and field Olympian, articulated this concern best, stating, “In the U.S. we’re no stranger to athletes dying from heat.”
The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing were the first ever to be held entirely on artificial snow. As global temperatures continue to increase, the prospect of future Winter Games hangs in the balance, and the number of locations that can host them continues to dwindle.
The reality is that sports are digging their own grave by agreeing to platform fossil fuel companies. According to Nielsen Sports, sports are one of the top 5 most trusted vehicles to promote products and companies. Sports offer prestige, global reach to billions of fans, and a fun, dynamic space for people to interact and network. By accepting money from fossil fuel companies, sports organizations legitimize their actions in the eyes of their supporters, thereby perpetuating the climate crisis. They become complicit actors, worsening the problem that will ultimately be their downfall.
Still, many sports organizations continue to accept oil and gas money because it is convenient - and hard to resist. In the U.S. the Los Angeles Dodgers fossil fuel sponsorships have been covered repeatedly by the Los Angeles Times, with no change in behavior. In the words of Sam Mattis, “the phrase penny wise dollar dumb comes to mind.”
Thankfully, some within the industry do understand the real ramifications for sports if fossil fuel sponsorship, and ultimately extraction and burning, is not ceased. Lord Sebastian Coe, President of World Athletics said, “With global temperatures continuing to rise, climate change should increasingly be viewed as an existential threat to sport.”
Adjacent organizations, such as BASIS, Football For Future, Fossil Free Football, Sport Positive, Green Sports Alliance, and the Sport Environment Alliance, have also been sounding the alarm for years. But it has not fully sunk in for many sports leagues, governing bodies, and teams around the world.
The Solutions
Earlier this summer, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a ban on fossil fuel advertising to protect the world from climate change. The Hague became the first city in the world to adopt a ban on fossil fuel advertising — it will go into effect on January 1, 2025. The Dirty Money report from the New Weather Institute calls for the same thing to happen in the sports industry. Unfortunately, according to Professor Simon Chadwick, expert in Sport and Geopolitical Economy, this is unlikely to occur in the short-term.
A cessation of fossil fuel sponsorship in sports would first require that the industry take the consequences of climate change seriously, which as whole, it currently does not. It would also require a common consensus on how to deal with the problem, and ultimately some form of regulation with external enforcement, or self-regulation. As Chadwick puts it “this is often difficult to achieve unless there is an economic or legal imperative,” neither of which currently exist.
To effectively end fossil fuel sponsorships in sports — undoubtedly the right decision — alternative sources of equal funding need to be found. Because most sports organizations continue to operate in a profit-driven model, putting equally lucrative but ethically superior funding options on the table would be more likely to create behavioral change in the industry. There is an argument to be made that sports organizations will need to shift their mentality away from a profit-driven approach to facilitate adaptation to a new climate reality. Moreover, Chadwick argues that giving organizations a runway to adapt to change, as opposed to a cliff edge ban, would smooth the transition. This recommendation is harder to take on board given the race against time that the fight against climate change has become.
Another solution recommended by the New Weather Institute is to demand greater transparency from sponsors about the economic value of their sponsorship agreements, their emissions data, and their mitigation measures. The think tank’s employees spent hours scouring the internet for news pieces and press releases to find the data for this report. Many sponsorship deals remain opaque, which limits the ability to comb through them, let alone hold the parties involved to account.
American electric racing driver Ellis Spiezia, spoke to the importance of credible, accountable sponsors, stating, “Sponsorship is critical to the success of athletes, teams and series, and our ability to reach, impact and inspire people around the world. With climate action at the forefront, we need brands and companies supporting sport who are transparent, authentic and committed to making a better future for my generation.”
Professor Chadwick made two other suggestions to help sports combat fossil fuel sponsorship and, ultimately, climate change. The first was to stop playing the blame game. Currently, Gulf fossil fuel companies are some of the heaviest investors in the sports industry. Evidently this is problematic, however, Chadwick insists that blaming one country or one company will not help solve the issue. Instead, deft diplomacy will be required to bring organizations together to collaborate on solutions. Chadwick does wonder, though, “whether sports have the quality of leadership or strength of resolve to successfully do this.”
Climate change is a global problem, and will require a multitude of global solutions. Chadwick feels that taking sports more seriously, especially at major international forums like COP or the UN General Assembly, would be hugely helpful. Sports’ impact on environmental degradation, its influence on billions of people , and its contribution to global warming must be discussed with political and industry decision-makers.
Last year SailGP held a Race for the Future takeover at COP28. It highlighted the power of sports and helped shed light on different sustainable technologies that the industry can use to power its events. Moreover, it drew in high-level decision-makers from around the world to discuss sports’ place in helping solve climate change. It was a small step in the right direction, but more action is needed especially from more prominent sporting organizations.
It will take the whole sports industry, including all 5 billion soccer fans, all 2.5 billion cricket fans, and the 1 billion tennis fans to create meaningful change. But the sports industry has nothing to lose. If nothing changes, it will cease to exist as soon as climates become too inhospitable for sports to continue to be played from grassroots to elite levels. The first step is for the sports industry to recognize the severity of the issue, and that begins with accepting that climate change is an existential threat, and choosing not to platform the very industry that continues to exacerbate that threat.