“You’re not going to be relevant
to consumers if you’re not sustainable.”
- San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York
By Dave Newport, LEED AP
Playing kid hockey on
New England’s frozen ponds, I learned early it’s easier to score with the wind
at your back.
OK, although I played pee wee, bantam, and started in high
school, I didn’t score much. Loved the game; but wasn’t that good.
Anyway, now the National Hockey League is leading pro
sports’ sustainability team into
climate change’s stiff headwinds by attaining
carbon neutrality for all of its 28 teams and stadiums. Yup. Done. It’s a
huge achievement and they did it right. Renewables, conservation, efficiency
and offsets. The first sport to begin to completely rewrite its place on the planet.
Fabulous.
They did it because the NHL needs the frozen ponds where future
hockey stars and fans grow up. Hockey
needs ice, period. Kids in cold climes
grow up like I did: pushing around a chunk of black rubber on slabs of solid
water to fulfill childhood dreams of skating fast, wearing the uniform of their
heroes, and feeling the cold wind enliven a fresh young face.
Yes, and crashing into other players too. Fun!
Cold headwinds face college sports too. And more college
athletics programs are embracing sustainability practices to tack into those
winds.
Indeed, as rabid fans await the next college football
season, college athletics faces a formidable challenge of its legal and moral
license to operate—along with the effects of climate change.
Polls
show public opinion of the legitimacy of big time college sports is volatile
and seemingly divided along class and racial lines. Court
verdicts are reshaping the rules of how college students participate in
varsity sports. Concerns over the money spent on new stadiums and coaches are
thrashed about daily in public debate.
Bottom line: even leaders like SEC commissioner Mike Slive concede
college sports are “going
through a historic evolution.”
The game is changing--for the better.
The thrill of victory
Against the roar of the reform crowd, another voice is
beginning to rise in college stadiums nationwide. That message is coming from athletics
departments inspiring their fans to “be on the team” by embracing
sustainability behaviors in the stadium—and more significantly, in their own
home, work, and play.
Big and small college sports programs are implementing
sustainability attributes like zero waste, renewable energy, green stadium
construction, local food choices, and alternative transportation options in
campus sports facilities. A recent report from the National Resources Defense Council identified over 200 NCAA athletics departments getting in the sustainability game at some level. They are also using that platform to inspire their fans to
raise their sustainability games at home.
And it’s working.
A study published by Prof
Jon Casper of NC State found that strong fan majorities attending football
games where athletics’ recycling and energy conservation practices were
showcased were inspired to increase their recycling and energy conservation
practices at home. Equally strong fan majorities felt athletic departments have
a responsibility to integrate environmental protection in their operations.
We’ve seen similar results of these “fan engagement for sustainability”
practices at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). Eight years ago CU became
the first NCAA Division 1 athletics program to implement a zero waste program
across all operations. Now, CU Athletics is zero waste, zero carbon, and zero
pesticides across all sports. And more is coming.
Colorado is working with major sponsors and local community
partners to use its sports sustainability leadership as a means to influence
fans and local citizens to take home new sustainability behaviors. The goal:
double Boulder’s composting rate community-wide in a year.
Indeed, CU is not alone. Other major college sports programs like the
University of Michigan’s are aligning athletics sustainability efforts with
campus mission in creative ways that benefit fans, the campus, and athletics.
In Michigan’s enormous football stadium a semester-long
fan competition invites teams of students and faculty to research and
propose innovative approaches to sustainability challenges in campus operations.
Last year, the winning team won $20,000. Dozens of well researched and compiled
proposals were received.
Moreover, it was Michigan’s formidable athletics program
brought together sports, academics, research, and student engagement behind a
sustainability agenda consistent with the mission of higher education: learning.
Campus sustainability needs more of those examples.
Sports and community
And it’s not just the big boys hogging the ball. On the
contrary, these leading athletics programs are helping catalyze a national
effort. NRDC
Senior Scientist Allen Hershkowitz, Ph.D., notes that college sports programs
continue to enter this arena because, “sports sustainability punches above its
weight.”
What does that mean?
Citing a 2011 Marist
poll, Hershkowitz notes, “Only 13 percent of Americans follow science, but 63
percent follow sports. So on what better
field is there to pitch sustainability?”
And what a field it is. This year, college sports will draw over
30-million Americans into over 700 stadiums nationwide, the NCAA reports. And those fans are a melting pot of Americans
who leave their political ideologies at the ticket taker as they peacefully file
into the stadium filled with fellow fans.
Why?
As one athletic director of a major college program told me,
“We don’t really sell football here on Saturdays. We sell community. That’s why
people come; to stand with their community. That’s why college football works.
That’s why sustainability works here. It’s all about community.”
A recent conference about engaging sports fans behind their
teams listed several necessary elements in successful fan engagement efforts.
Most valued: authenticity.
People want to be treated as people, not bobbleheads.
Sports sustainability
as a survival mechanism
College sports leaders obviously sense sustainability’s glue
with their fan base—and they read their trade press too. A recent
article by the respected Sports Business
Journal executive editor Abraham
Madkour highlighted last year’s Green Sports Alliance (GSA) conference
keynote delivered by the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York. “The message is clear: Sports can serve as a
driver for environmental efficiency,” York said.
Moreover, the 49ers CEO “also sounded a cautionary note to
organizations that aren’t as progressive [as the 49ers]. “You’re not going to be relevant to consumers
if you’re not sustainable.”
And consumer relevance equals brand value equals the biggest
driver of revenues for college sports. College
fans shell out an estimated $2.7-billion a year in non-apparel spending,
according to Sports Media Inc. The NCAA takes in $700-million just in TV
rights. And ESPN reports that the top
120 college athletic programs gross over $437-million in sponsorships, TV
rights, branding, etc. every year.
So far, the above revenues obviously dwarf
sustainability-specific sponsorships, but they are growing. For instance, UPS
this year joined Fortune firms Aramark and Waste Management as major sponsors
of the Green Sports
Alliance (GSA).
Only five year old, the GSA seeks to change the planet
through sports. The GSA now represents nearly 300 sports teams
and venues from 20 different sports leagues and 14 countries. Recently,
all twelve PAC-12 campuses and the conference office joined thus making that so-called
NCAA power conference the first complete collegiate league to embrace the GSA’s
green goals.
Sport’s proven
playbook
So, what does Hershkowitz mean by “sports sustainability punches
above its weight?” Simply that while
sustainability is currently a low visibility part of the sports world; its
impact on fans is huge.
Sports are seeking positive impacts; they get dinged for the
negative ones every day.
College athletics high-visibility travails kicked off this
blog. Across all sports more systemic concerns of consumerism, bloated pro
athlete wages, questionable practices in international soccer, and the objectification of women are just a few of the other legitimate
concerns.
Thus sports sustainability ethics and practices must
reconcile with issues averse to sustainability’s principles and practices. But a sports industry buoyed by sustainability
has the power and potential to do that, has done it before, and is going back
to that playbook.
Remember Jackie
Robinson? College baseball was integrated long before Jackie Robinson broke
the color barrier in professional ball. And Title IX? College sports opened
the door to women’s sports and thus helped birth some of the greatest empowered
women of our time who light up the eyes and hearts of young girls across
America. Now, women represent the future of all sport, new
research shows.
Sport’s new frontier: a sustainability-based sports paradigm
that inspires millions of fans to new sustainability wins in their everyday
lives. And it’s just the beginning.
The NHL’s quest for natural ice is just the tip of the iceberg.
-30-
NOTE: I recently
accepted an invitation to join the
Board of Directors of the Green Sports Alliance, a group of big time
sports executives, athletes, enviros and great staff with a passion for sustainability. What an extraordinary
group of people. Been on a lot of boards in my career; haven’t seen this level
of personal and professional respect and dedication to mission nearly enough.
