Fans expect more sustainability in sports. How to handle this challenge?

The organization of sporting events entails a significant energy consumption. As the general awareness regarding energy consumption is growing, the sport-industry increases its efforts to find a suitable answer for this challenge.

In this regard, LifeTackle united several stakeholders in the field to give their opinion in 2 panel discussions on how to increase the environmental sustainability level in sporting activities.

As ESSMA, we enjoyed the conference and take home following inspiration points:

• Spectators expert their clubs and by extension their stadiums to be as ecofriendly as possible. Recent studies show this eco friendliness adds significantly to their fan experience and slowly becomes a must-have.
• Think small, create big impact. Delegates from both FIFA™ as the Royal Belgian Football Association shared the opinion that you cant’t turn things around overnight but small actions are within the reach of practically every club or stadium. Suggestions like providing bikes for fans towards the stadium in addition to public transport were considered a viable, smaller action with significant impact.
• Popular players can contribute a great amount to the sustainability goal. Just like in popular music industry, we should get some players with a large influence to support the cause. For instance, Eden Hazard on an e-bike towards practice seemed a good idea to the entire panel!

You can find more information regarding the conference on their website or their social media channels.

From our side, we continue to keep a close eye on the evolutions in this expert area and try to contribute where possible!