Are Big Sports Leagues Eco-Friendly?

By: Eduardo Ferreira

As time goes on and the future gets greener by the minute, people are starting to question if big sports leagues like the NBA and the NFL are green and if not, how much these leagues impact the issues in the world, and how to stop it. 
 
Sustainably speaking, the main problem with these big sports leagues is travel. Even in domestic leagues, such as the NBA, flights across and even outside the country result in large amounts of carbon dioxide emissions. Even in smaller domestic leagues, such as Liga Portugal, carbon dioxide emissions to and from away games pollute the environment. This is just accounting for the carbon dioxide released by the travel of players and coaches; hundreds of people go across the country and even to other countries to watch their favourite football, basketball, and other sports teams compete away from home. This creates an even larger carbon footprint, with hundreds of flights and cars every hour of every day going across the city, across the country and even across continents and oceans. 
 
In addition, the construction of stadiums and fields results in large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Many larger-scale sports teams have enormous stadiums; such as the Wembley Stadium with a capacity of roughly 90 thousand people, the United Center with a capacity of roughly 20 thousand people, and the Michigan Stadium with a capacity of over 100 thousand people. These stadiums are expensive, with the SoFi Stadium in California costing a whopping 6.22 billion US dollars to build. The sheer size of these sports arenas is unprecedented – for example, Wembley Stadium is roughly 133 meters tall, half of the height of the Empire State Building. 
 
Trips, buildings, staff, and maintenance account for extreme amounts of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce these emissions, stadiums could reduce in size, but the stature and appearance of stadiums are what makes them special; imagine watching the current treble winners Manchester City playing in Accrington Stanley's Wham Stadium. Reducing the size of large championships also wouldn't work. The main factor that makes tournaments like the Champions League so successful and fun to watch is that they have the best teams from Europe competing. Turning the competition into a national league instead of an international league would just make it another LaLiga or Premier League. Shrinking the size of national leagues also wouldn't work. Leagues like this only exist because teams from all over the country, such as the US, compete in a single league. Regional leagues do work occasionally; however, only in cases where there are many teams. Some leagues claim to be divided regionally, like the Eastern and Western Conference, but they are truly just dividers. True regional, mainstream leagues are extremely hard to find; a prime example are the interstate championships in Brazil, but even those are out classed by the Brasileirão. 

In order to improve the "greenness" of the NBA, there could be a removal of the playoffs. Playoffs are a post-season tournament that makes it so that the best 16 teams face off against each other multiple times. This is terribly unsustainable, since the first stage has an average of 80 games – roughly 40 trips in total (41 away and 41 home games). Sometimes these are bus trips, and sometimes plane rides. Removing playoffs and keeping just the league, which is already 82 games long, and a final between the top team in the eastern conference and the western conference to decide who is the winner of that season, would be a viable and sustainable solution. 

Sports Leagues can never be truly green. Some of the most famous sports use high carbon-footprint vehicles as their main base, such as Formula 1 and the Moto GP. In an average Formula 1 race, 20 cars will travel at roughly 250 kilometers per hour for, at least, 305 kilometers. Considering this, each Formula 1 race you watch with Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, and Charles Leclerc releases roughly 11 thousand tons of carbon dioxide. And these competitions get more or less 1.2 million viewers worldwide on TV and around 50-100 thousand are present at the racetrack. This isn't even accounting for the plane rides since a Formula 1 season takes place at 23 different tracks all around the entire world hundreds of hours per season worth of plane rides. 
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And of course, the World Cups and International competitions. In most cases, 32 national teams with players all around the world will fly in to play in a tournament every so often. For example, the Brazil 2022 World Cup team had players who were playing for clubs in England, France, Spain, Mexico, Italy, and Brazil itself. This is also recurrent in the Basketball world cup, since players from Slovenia play in Spain and players from Brazil play in Czechia. Both these cases mean that hundreds of international flights were taken by players back to their home nations, and then to the host nation of that year's world cup. The Olympics might be even more guilty, since, if every one of the 206 countries represented in the Olympics were to send a maximum of 2,500 athletes, there would be 515 thousand athletes in a singular city. Imagine how many greenhouse gases are produced by plane rides to and from the Olympics and bus rides to and from the venues. This doesn't even take into account the Paralympics or even the Winter Olympics, or even fans, coaches, staff and more. 

Big sports leagues and competitions provide substantial amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, and there is much to improve. To correct this pressing matter, we must investigate green forms of transportation to and from away games, more sustainable stadiums, venues, and tracks whilst keeping the wonderful world of sports alive. ​