Table: Source: New Weather Institute
What might sports look like in a warming world?
If you like home runs, you’ll love climate change. As the temperature rises, air resistance goes down. Researchers at Dartmouth College have calculated that human-caused warming led to 58 extra home runs each Major League Baseball season for the last decade, and predict hundreds more as warming continues.
If only the rest of the story was so benign. Melting ski slopes, scorching temperatures, and smoke-filled skies threaten some of the world’s favorite pastimes and the athletes who participate in them, from grassroots to the professionals.
The Lascaux caves in France, painted 15,000 years ago, appear to show sprinting and wrestling matches. Physical games and competition it seems are foundational to the human experience—whether in the Stone Age or the Anthropocene. But like so many other endeavors, sports will confront the specter of a climate-changed future, in part by letting go of long-cherished traditions and in part by reinventing itself.
• • •
The First Half Is Over
1. A lost month of winter. Winter in the US has shrunk about four weeks over the last century, with the date of the first and last frosts getting closer by a couple of days each decade. And what winter there is, is wetter than ever. Since 1949, nearly 80% of weather stations across North America have recorded an increase in winter precipitation falling as rain instead of snow, according to the National Environmental Education Foundation. That’s squeezing ski resorts, which typically need 100 days of open snow days to break even. Research from the University of Waterloo estimates that only one of the 21 cities that hosted the Winter Olympics in the past 100 years will have a climate suitable for skiing and snowboarding by the end of the century.
2. Indoor summers. Outdoor sports have gotten dangerous. The women’s marathon at the 2019 World Athletics Championship in Qatar started at 11.59pm to avoid the worst of the heat. Even so, over 40% of starters failed to finish the course. During the Tour de France, traditionally held in July, organizers faced with cyclists suffering heatstroke spray roads with water to reduce temperatures—hardly an option for recreational riders. And some hazards no money can protect from. At least one player in the 2020 Australian Open tennis championship retired after breathing wildfire smoke.
3. Seasonal athletic disorder. As summers turn hostile, the biggest impacts will fall on the youngest and poorest players playing grassports sports. MIT researchers have calculated that south and southeast US states will lose about 20% of their tolerable outdoor days by 2100, and there will be similar decreases in the Global South. California has already changed its rules for when young athletes can play and practice in high temperatures. As the heat rises, players must be given extra water breaks, shed protective gear, and ultimately, stop practicing outdoors altogether. Some coaches are even suggesting shifting the entire football season to avoid the most intense temperatures.
• • •
How the Second Half Might Play Out
1. Return to lockdown schedules. Sports leagues in the US could slash carbon emissions associated with air travel by more than one-fifth by returning to pandemic-era schedules, according to research out of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, professional leagues canceled overseas games, scheduled multiple games in a row, and increased local and regional match-ups. The move helped keep players safe, but the drop in air travel also significantly reduced their emissions. Some athletes are now changing their own travel habits: champion Swedish skier Björn Sandström drives long distances to his training sessions in an electric car rather than flying. “I wanted to show that it is possible to conduct elite sports in a different way,” he told Cool Down, a sport for climate action network.
2. Choosing racquets over irons. Sport doesn’t just suffer from climate change, it contributes to it, too. The 2022 FIFA soccer World Cup had a carbon footprint of over 3.6 million tons of CO2. Over half that total was due to jet travel by spectators, players and officials. At a grassroots level, which sports you participate in can make a big difference to your emissions. Soccer has one of the lowest carbon footprints in sport, along with gym sessions and tennis, according to a comprehensive 2018 study from Germany. Playing golf, diving, and surfing generate over six times the emissions as the lowest sports—again, mostly due to the travel involved.

Source: German Sport University Cologne
3. Greener arenas. Some newer venues are taking sustainability seriously. The Nef soccer stadium in Istanbul has a 4.2 megawatt rooftop solar farm, while the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta matches sportswashing with actual water efficiency, including a 680,000-gallon rainwater cistern that helps with cooling and irrigation. The Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle goes one step further, usingcaptured rainwater to make ice for the resident NHL team, and is the first sports venue to earn Zero Carbon Certification from the International Living Future Institute.
• • •
What To Keep An Eye On
1. Cooler fabrics and ski slopes. University of Chicago materials scientists have prototyped a fabric that can actively cool its wearer by radiating their heat directly into space. It’s a natural mechanism used by some desert creatures to survive intense heat. The new materials are likely to start out as high-end sportswear, but could eventually also help agricultural and emergency workers cope with searing outdoor temperatures. The same radiative cooling could potentially even be applied to entire ski slopes, using a biodegradable film developed in Nanjing, China..
2. Sportswashing vs the stars. “Less than 20% of Americans regularly follow science, over 80% regularly follow sports,” notes Allen Hershkowitz, environment advisor for the NY Yankees, in thisilluminating PBS segment. “The most influential role models are athletes. If athletes are selling cars, if they’re endorsing banks, if they’re selling pizza, why can’t they sell environmental literacy?” The problem is, far too many are still selling cars and planes. In September, climate think-tank New Weather reported that major oil and gas companies are spending at least $5.6 billion on the sponsorship of global sport across 205 active deals, with few sports untouched. But individual athletes are speaking out—marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge promotes clean air initiatives, tennis champion Naomi Osaka raises awareness about sustainable fashion, and Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton invests in renewable technologies, according to a recent World Economic Forum report.

Source: New Weather Institute
3. E-sports. Organized video game competitions are surging in popularity and could thread the climate needle, neither being affected by extreme weather nor requiring top players to jump on jets. Last year’s inaugural E-sports World Cup offered $60 million in prizes and attracted over 500 teams. But while the qualifying stages happened virtually, the championship itself was hosted in petrostate Saudi Arabia. Will e-sports follow traditional sports down the sportswashing path, or will fully immersive virtual arenas win out?
New Weather report finds Oil and Gas ‘sportswashing’ now a $5.6 billion industry
The time is now to ask “uncomfortable questions” regarding sponsors who threaten the future of sport, says former Australian soccer captain Craig Foster
“Taking money from fossil fuel sponsors is sport signing a deal for more devastating impacts on floods, bush fires and heatwaves. We know oil and gas sponsors are the toughest opponents we face when it comes to protecting the future of the people and places we love, as well as the games we love.” David Pocock, former Captain of Australian national Rugby Union team, the Wallabies and Senator for the Australian Capital Territory.
A New Weather Institute report Dirty Money – How Fossil Fuel Sponsors are Polluting Sportreleased today reveals that major oil and gas companies are spending at least $5.6 billion on the sponsorship of global sport across 205 active deals.
Our study finds high profile sports with the most deals are football, motor sports, rugby union and golf, with key sponsors including Aramco ($1.3 billion), Shell ($470 million), TotalEnergies ($340 million) and petrochemicals giant Ineos ($777 million).The findings come just days ahead of the UN’s Summit of the Future later this month. New Weather’s work on fossil fuel sponsorship of sports through its Badvertising campaign has already contributed to shifting the conversation to question the acceptability of oil and gas money in sport at a time of climate crisis. This report shows the huge scale of the issue and the urgent need to clean up the sports sponsorship world.
Former Australian men’s football captain, Craig Foster said: “It’s sobering, though unsurprising, to see that my own sport, football, leads the league of shame for fossil fuel sponsorship… [F]or too long, the uncomfortable questions regarding the oil and gas sponsors who are undermining our safe future and that of sport have been ignored. We, as athletes, fans, and custodians of sport, must address them.”
“The fact that Paris created a fossil fuel free Olympics games shows that it’s not necessary for other sports to accept a poisoned chalice from oil and gas sponsors. Any short term financial gain is just not worth it, when we can see the devastating impacts that are playing out in communities worldwide, in grassroots sport and sport more widely,” said Imogen Grant, Paris 2024 Olympic Champion and 2x Team GB Olympian.
“Oil companies who are delaying climate action and pouring more fuel on the fire of global heating, are using big tobacco’s old playbook and trying to pass themselves off as patrons of sport. But air pollution from fossil fuels and the extreme weather of a warming world threaten the very future of athletes, fans and events ranging from the Winter Olympics to World Cups. If sport is to have a future it needs to clean itself of dirty money from big polluters and stop promoting its own destruction.” said Andrew Simms, co-director of the New Weather Institute
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