When we’re sitting on our sofas, watching sports games, and supporting our favourite team or players, the carbon footprint of the sports games we’re watching may seem like a trivial afterthought. Especially in the larger picture of the climate crisis, how harmful could a global sporting event like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics be? 

Corporations in the sports business will often deceive society through greenwashing. These corporations will make misleading claims to publicly showcase environmental concerns and efforts while simultaneously barely taking any real sustainable actions. 

Environmental hazards of Qatar 2022 World Cup

Before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, FIFA claimed that the event would be “fully carbon neutral”. However, climate experts have shed doubt on this claim, as FIFA’s carbon offset scheme doesn’t remove carbon from the atmosphere. Further, FIFA’s calculations undervalued emissions by disregarding the carbon footprint of constructing seven new stadiums in preparation for the World Cup.

In July 2023, advertising regulator Swiss Fairness Commission upheld complaints from five European nations, and ruled that FIFA could not prove its claims about the tournament’s carbon neutrality and used controversial calculations that did not comply with Swiss standards, where FIFA is based. 

In their sponsorship with QatarEnergy to promote liquified natural gas (LNG), FIFA labelled QatarEnergy as “responsible for the development of cleaner energy resources.” However, using LNGs delays the transition to renewables, and therefore has negative environmental consequences. While considered a cleaner fossil fuel compared to coal and oil, as it produces less air pollutants when burnt, LNGs still produce a significant amount of methane in extracting, refining, and shipping. 

Moreover, Qatar lacked the necessary infrastructure to host the World Cup, which led to constructing stadiums, transportation, and a multitude of hotels for attendees. To address this mass construction, World Cup host countries aim to keep the tournament venues in use after the event to distribute the carbon impact in the coming years. However, the stadiums in countries less known for their soccer culture, such as Qatar, can become wasteful and unproductive investments. 

Numerous stadiums built for the World Cup remain unused and abandoned, even countries with a thriving soccer culture like Brazil, Russia, and South Africa, that “have been left with a herd of white-elephant stadiums” — leaving behind landscapes straight from a post-apocalyptic film. Additionally, continuously changing hosting countries means that it is quite unlikely that the stadiums will be used for the same purpose again.

Challenges of a sustainable Olympics

The Olympics have been another relevant topic of sustainability in the sports industry. A longitudinal study of the Olympic Games from 1992 to 2020 disclosed that the sustainability standard of the games was moderate. On top of that, the environmental impact of the Olympic Games has worsened over the years. 

The study also suggests a general negative trend in sustainability, as the more recent Olympics, such as 2014 Sochi and 2016 Rio, have been the most environmentally concerning games. 

In the months leading to the 2024 Paris Olympics, whether the games would be any different had been a pressing matter. Like the World Cup in Qatar, the Paris Olympics advocated for cutting carbon emissions. However, the event is too recent to have significant research published on its sustainability. 

The Paris Olympics made honest efforts toward sustainability, as they limited the construction of new facilities, used bio-sourced resources, reused and recycled materials and created a sustainable plan for food services. However, environmental watchdogs Carbon Market Watch and Éclaircieshave criticized Paris 2024 for failing to provide detailed frameworks and thorough monitoring. 

Solutions for eco-friendly hosting of sports events

While juggling between the same few countries is one solution, it could entail relying on the same few places that have historically contributed significantly to global carbon emissions. Instead, Jules Boykoff, a professor of political science at Pacific University, suggested decreasing the games’ size, creating eco-friendlier supply chains, and restricting the number of tourists travelling to the host country as potential solutions. Both the World Cup and the Olympics make it apparent that appointing different hosts for any sports event can amplify carbon emissions.

Stepping on a plane to watch your favourite players is an unforgettable experience, but we tend to overlook the fact that travel alone made up approximately 50 per cent of the carbon emissions from the 2022 Qatar World Cup. Most importantly, Boykoff encourages host countries to be more transparent with their environmental records to allow for greater accountability.