Is your football club scoring community goals?

Good intentions

The idea of a sustainable football club isn’t clear-cut. What does it even mean? Sustainability has become a bit of a buzzword in recent years, especially when large corporate bodies are involved. Certainly touting a sustainable approach or plan doesn’t always equate to action or results.

However, there are practical ways to observe and measure the initiatives of footballing clubs to see if they’re making a genuine effort toward sustainability.

A good study

One report that stands out is the BBC’s most sustainable club rankings, which focus on the English Premier League. This study was first published in 2019 to gauge the efforts of each top flight club in areas such as energy efficiency and cleanliness, sustainable transport, plastic reduction, waste management, water use, plant based food, and communication or engagement. That’s a broad range of categories which undoubtedly make it hard to produce a single overarching score, especially when some clubs have the money to build more modern facilities. Newer stadiums are typically more energy efficient and boast better water management tools, among other things.

Still, that Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur all received top marks in this study in 2019, and then again in 2021, show a consistency to what they’re doing and surely pleased their respective fan bases as much as club owners and managers. There’s something very appealing about supporting a club that thinks about sustainability – or more acutely, recycling, better transport around grounds or more thoughtful food options that are less damaging to the planet. These factors are hard to ignore in 2021 for both corporate boards and fans alike. And in this sense, we’re all in these goals together, which helps improve our football communities.

Awareness versus action

Of course, awareness of sustainability is just one aspect of building a better community. Actual real impacts – which can’t always be measured in full – are very important in all of this, as the BBC rightly notes. For example, carbon emissions caused by a club’s stadiums and buildings, the total consumption levels of fanbases and even waste produced during fixtures, are crucial in assessing a club’s sustainability properly.

There’s even more: how about all the fans globally travelling to and from parks, or using digital devices to tap into their club’s games, highlights or other content? How do you accurately measure the impact of all this? Or the production of merchandise at a global scale? Again, this requires dedicated analyses and would differ for clubs and competitions everywhere.

At least there is a growing interest in sustainability across all sport, giving greater clarity on how we should feel about our favourite clubs and the experiences they provide, beyond the scoresheet, that is.