Sports' ties to fossil fuel face growing scrutiny

How big is the fossil fuel industry's influence on world sport? And what can clubs, athletes, and fans do to reduce this unsustainable relationship?

That was the topic of a session at Play the Game 2025  ‘Playing with fire: Fossil fuel's grip on world sport’.

Robin Cartier, an activist and masters student at Fossil Free Football and Malmö University, has studied the intimate relationship between football and fossil fuel sponsorship. He concluded that football's carbon footprint is growing and encompasses infrastructure, transport, merchandise, and polluting sponsors.

As part of the research, he interviewed five football clubs in five countries, Bodø/Glimt in Norway, Malmö FF in Sweden, Real Betis Balompié in Spain, Arsenal FC in England and Stade Lavallois MFC in France, and he found that ‘ethical sensitivity resonates more strongly within clubs than climate sensitivity’ and ‘polluting sponsors are rarely perceived as truly problematic or as direct contributors to the climate crisis’.

However, Robin Cartier also pointed out that some progressive football clubs have now begun to replace their climate-damaging, unsustainable sponsors with solution-oriented, sustainable sponsors. 

Athletes and fans can also act

Another presenter was Chris Horbel, professor at the Department of Sport and Social Sciences at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, who spoke about the potential of a greenwashing ban for the European sports sector.

After the session, Play the Game asked Chris Horbel what athletes and sports fans can do right now to help reduce the fossil fuel industry's grip on world sport during a global climate crisis that many experts believe requires urgent action from both politicians, business leaders and the public.

“They can use their voice, and one easy thing to do would be to not buy the merchandise that has these logos on them to not support that these sponsorships exist,” Chris Horbel said.

“Athletes have a lot of power to engage people and unite them behind the mission. And I think that what is really needed is also to explain why you speak up for these issues while at the same time you have to sit on a plane to get to your match or your training camp”.

Athletes need support to speak up

Chris Horbel added that many athletes care a lot more about the climate crisis than they express because they are afraid of receiving backlash for it.

“Many athletes care but they are also aware of their own actions and know that this is problematic because they cannot solve these issues on their own. They might need help and support from their sports federations and their coaches,” she said.

“I think athletes are ready for much more action than we believe, but we need to keep in mind that it is natural for athletes to do everything they can to perform well in their competition. And some of the necessary actions might be detrimental for that, so we need athletes to speak up, but also to have issues taken up at other levels, the international level in particular, because this is where international competition is regulated.”

A sports tax system could work

But to Chris Horbel, athletes, spectators, and other participants still have a voice in pushing for regulations and governance changes.

“Some sports go in the right direction. But the biggest ones that we need the most, like the IOC, FIFA and UEFA, are not ready for changes, and not because they can’t," she said.

She believes they have the resources, but a lot of political games are going on, which stop them from taking climate action seriously because other things - especially commercial aspects - are more important to them.

How urgent is it to solve this issue compared to other issues in sport, such as doping, match-fixing, abuse and so on?

“There are many serious issues in sport, but this is probably the most pressing one in terms of time. If actions do not happen now, we cannot turn it around."

"But sport should think about how they can complement action in all these fields. Very often you hear the argument that we do not have resources for everything. But I think there are a lot of resources going into a lot of stuff where it is not needed - like in professional sport, where many people can agree that individual players are getting paid too much."

"There is a lot of potential to take money out and use it for other purposes. This is an easy one to change. It’s hard to regulate, but there is a lot of opportunity if there is a will, and the will is perhaps the problem.”

Do we need some kind of sports tax system to finance and solve all these issues?

“That would be a simple solution. The question is, how do we get an agreement on doing that, and who should be the tax administrator? But it is obvious, and I think it can work.”