Sustainability awareness and action across sport in the UK is increasing in line with the awareness of fans, athletes and administrators. The increases in BASIS membership, the success of our training programmes and the popularity of our events throughout 2024 – and the prominence of the great work done by our friends, such as Sport Positive – are signs that sustainability is becoming a serious priority for our sector.
Against a backdrop of growing climate anxiety, and the increasing fragility of climate diplomacy, this is encouraging – but everyone at the sharp end of sustainability in sport knows that we still have a long way to go before we can say our house is in order.
At the start of a new year, we take a brief (inexhaustive and incomplete) look at the big trends we expect to see shaping sustainable sport in 2025:
- Increasing Impacts
In early December, the Merseyside Derby was the most high-profile casualty of a sporting weekend which was significantly disrupted by the threat posed and damage caused by Storm Darragh. We know that climate change makes these storms more likely, more frequent, and more intense. As we showed in Game Changer II, flooding, infrastructure damage, water scarcity and extreme heat are already affecting sport at all levels in the UK. Expect to see these impacts increase and, with more clubs and governing bodies committed to gathering data on climate-related disruption, expect to see a more evidence-based conversation about sport’s long-term resilience.
- Data Dominance
Tracking climate impacts is not the only area where data’s influence will grow – data gathering, use and analytics is becoming increasingly important in shaping sustainability strategy and driving action.
The integration of sustainability metrics into performance analysis, logistics, and operational management is gaining momentum. Enabled by technological advancements, clubs, leagues, and federations are turning to data analytics to measure carbon footprints, water usage, waste management, and energy consumption in real-time.
From tracking the carbon footprint of team travel to reducing energy use in stadiums and arenas, data-driven technologies are becoming increasingly normalised in managing the environmental impact of sporting operations. Throughout the year, BASIS will be working on ways to enable every one of our members – regardless of size and budget – to harness data and technological tools to deliver progress.
- Athletes’ Advocacy
Driven by a growing awareness that climate change impacts the sports they love, athletes are increasingly using their platforms to speak out on climate change and sustainability.
Stalwarts like David Wheeler have been joined by Tottenham defender Amy James Turner (a 2024 BASIS award winner) in calling for football to step up. More than 100 women footballers wrote an open letter to Gianni Infantino expressing their concern about Saudi Arabia’s environmental record after Aramco was announced as FIFA’s headline sponsor. Pat Cummins’ vocal advocacy has continued, and our Rings of Fire II report, which brought together the largest ever cross-section of climate-concerned athletes, was backed by an athletes panel at COP29 including double Olympic champion David Rudisha.
Their influence not only draws the eye of the media, it helps to awaken fans and create a positive culture of environmental responsibility among their fellow athletes. 2024’s climate champions remain the exception rather than the rule, but they have created a platform for so many more athletes to use their influence. We hope to see that platform used more and more in 2025.
- Sustainability Strategies
The number of clubs, leagues and governing bodies with published and active sustainability strategies has increased substantially. These strategies are becoming increasingly widespread, comprehensive and sophisticated – based on real knowledge of what works, underpinned by climate science, and committed to engage fans, athletes, participants, partners and the supply chain.
By the end of 2025, we can expect any organisation within sport that doesn’t have a sustainability strategy either in place or in development, or an employee with responsibility for driving sustainability action, to be the exception.
Rather than being bolted onto existing operations, the drive to reduce emissions, save energy and water, recycle waste, engage the wider community and promote a circular economy within sport will become increasingly integrated into the core business models of sports organisations. Sustainability will no longer occupy a nice-to-have niche; it will become a central part of how sports clubs and leagues operate.
- Political Pressure
2025 could be the last chance sport will have to demonstrate that it can deliver clear and ambitious environmental goals proactively, voluntarily, and without being regulated to do so. During the Committee Stage of the Football Governance Bill in the House of Lords, Ministers cited sport’s ability to drive positive environmental impacts from within as the justification for leaving environmental sustainability out of the new regulator’s scope. As Lord Deben told us in last month’s webinar, this leaves sport with a simple choice – deliver now, or expect to be regulated.
Either way, as Chris Boardman has said, the direction of travel on sustainability for the sport’s governing institutions is moving from “inform and encourage” to “enable and require”. The regulatory pressure is increasing.
There is another side to this coin. Taken together, sport is a fabulously lucrative and economically powerful industry – but spare cash remains hard to find. Almost every organisation within BASIS membership has already picked the low hanging fruit. Some of the big sustainability steps which remain in our sector, such as installing renewable energy generation at sports venues, require large amounts of upfront investment.
If Ministers are prepared to put pressure on sport – either through active encouragement or the veiled threat of future regulation – sport is entitled to demand more support for the practical steps required to deliver sustainability goals from a government which has, until now, been largely absent from the scene. Expect the relationship between climate change, sustainability and sport to move up the political agenda during 2025.
Conclusion
There is a lot we haven’t covered – the expectations of fans and prospective commercial partners, the incredible innovations in every area of delivery, etc – but five is a neat number and this piece is already quite long.
Whether these predictions prove to be accurate or not, the main message is this: as the impacts of climate change continue to intensify, despite our imperfections the shifts in sport are increasingly reflecting the broader global shift towards a more responsible and sustainable future. The question, though, remains the same: in the face of such an existential challenge, will it be enough?
