The global sports community must act on the climate emergency

Originally published in Business Green on July 6th 2020

By Steve Smith, Executive Director of Content, Sky Sports

The visual impact of the climate crisis on sport has become more prevalent in recent years - consider the smoke of blazing forest fires stretching across the courts of the Australian Open - but little is discussed of the role sport plays in our planetary crisis.

A recent report by RTA suggests that the carbon emissions of the global sports industry could potentially be similar in size to a country like Spain, without the emissions of its broadcasters included.

Sport has reach like few others and an immense power to bring positive social change through the actions and words of its athletes, clubs, governing bodies and fans. Now it is time for sport to use its force to act and accelerate our journey to net zero.

Earlier this year at Sky we announced our ambition to be net zero carbon across our entire value chain by 2030 and that means a lot more than just getting our own house in order. We're focused on improving the efficiencies of our own business, but we know that to get to net zero we need everyone to make significant changes including our customers, suppliers and industry peers.

By sharing information and setting ambitious industry-wide standards we can make a collective difference. It's why tomorrow, I'm delighted to be attending the first meeting of the newly formed BAFTA albert Sports Consortium alongside BT Sport, BBC, F1 and others, to share best practice on sustainability in sports broadcasting.

And this is something we know, from experience, can make a big difference. Over the last two years we've worked with Premier League Productions and other broadcasters to form a power-sharing agreement at football matches, which has led to a carbon saving of around 50 tonnes in six months.

An unexpected green-lining' to the coronavirus pandemic has been the requirement to accelerate the use of our remote production facilities. We'll be broadcasting a record 100 football games within 40 days while adhering to the government's social distancing guidelines and that means we've had to move fast to do things differently.

We have been using remote productions for around five years, but never at this scale or for Premier League matches. This has enabled us to get live football back on our screens but has also resulted in huge cuts on the travel and freight of the people and resources who would normally be onsite at matches but are now working from home. It's these kinds of learnings that we look forward to sharing with our peers in the albert Sports Consortium

Today also sees us become the first sports broadcaster to sign up to the UNFCCC Sports for Climate Action Framework. This commitment brings together the global sports community to combat climate change by using sport as a unifying tool to drive climate awareness and action. We can then map a clear trajectory to the net zero emission economy of 2050 that global leaders agreed under the Paris Agreement.

One of the learnings that we bring to the journey to net zero, is that by taking a lead in the Sports community, we can make an impact on society as a whole. Sky Sports can talk to people who green campaigners traditionally may not reach. The success of our Ocean Rescue campaign - highlighting the impact of single-use plastics - shows that Sport can lead the debate, and can be a trigger for wider action to protect our environment. That campaign resulted in us working with the Premier League and its clubs on a reusable cup trial at stadiums, and the Sky Ocean Rescue Test match at the Oval cricket ground, with the stadium going on to set its own target to be SUP-free by the end of 2020.

But we need to do more. Over the next decade, we will use our sports channels and our industry knowledge to encourage everyone to #GoZero with us. We'll be working with our peers, sporting clubs, governing bodies and athletes to communicate the climate crisis to audiences and help them reduce their carbon footprint.

Just imagine the difference we can make together.

Notes to editors

For further information:

Sian Parry, Senior Corporate Campaigns Manager: Sian.Parry@sky.uk

About Sky

With 24 million customers across seven countries, Sky is Europe's leading media and entertainment company and is proud to be part of the Comcast group. Our 32,000 employees help connect our customers to the very best entertainment, sports, news, arts and to our own local, original content.

Following the success of Sky originals like Chernobyl, we plan to double our investment in original content by 2024. We're also developing a new TV and movie studio, Sky Studios Elstree, which is expected to lead to the creation of over 2,000 new jobs and generate an additional £3 billion of production investment in UK creative sector in the first five years alone.

Our technology allows customers to watch what they want, when they want, how they want, and as we connect millions of families to content they love, we believe it is our responsibility to do it safely. That's why we offer services like Sky Broadband Buddy and the Sky Kids app. And our online streaming service, NOW TV, brings viewers all the enjoyment of Sky with the flexibility of a contract-free service.

We also believe that a company of our scale has a responsibility that goes beyond our business, and into the community. We recently announced a series of commitments to help tackle racial injustice and improve diversity and inclusion. To ensure the commitments are delivered, Sky will invest £10million per year across its markets for each of the next three years. We're committed to being Europe's first net zero carbon entertainment company by 2030 - two decades before we have to - and we're an inclusive employer recognised by The Times and

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