Fans to unite for a Fossil Free Football
This month, fans are coming together to send their clubs a clear message: polluting sponsors are not welcome here.
From airlines to big oil, cruise lines to SUVs, fossil fuel banks to petrochemicals, the promotion of harmful brands is everywhere in modern football.
These organisations know that a business model built on fossil fuels is running out of time. They’re in a desperate fight to cling on to their social licence to operate as anti-polluter backlash builds. But wrapping their brand around the world’s most popular sport offers them a unique chance to normalise their push for growth despite the urgent need to cut fossil fuels.
But many supporters already feel that it’s time for the clubs they love to break up with polluting sponsors. They want their team to have a positive impact and send the right messages, rather than drive demand for fossil fuels.
Fans are deeply concerned for the future of football in a world characterised by frequent extreme rainfall and heat waves. The sport is totally reliant on safe places to play, but is already seeing significant disruption to training and matches. Notably, the clubs that have done the most to cause the problem, by promoting the burning of fossil fuels through their sponsorship choices, constructing huge stadiums and choosing to take ultra short haul flights to matches, are less exposed to climate risks than clubs with a much smaller footprint who would likely struggle to recover from repeated extreme weather events.
Fossil Free Football has produced a spoof Real Madrid shirt to highlight the power of a ban on harmful advertising in sport. The image of a cigarette company sponsoring a top football team now looks jarring and wrong, but it was only through consistent campaigning and serious regulation that tobacco’s grip on sport was broken. Now, fossil fuel dependent companies are following the same methods to promote their own toxic product. Given that air pollution from burning petrol and diesel kills millions each year, it is surely time to actively drive down demand by banning polluting brands from football.
A few large entities sponsor multiple clubs across elite football whilst also being closely linked to not only fossil fuel pollution but also rights abuses, repression and violence. For example, Emirates is owned by the UAE state and is promoted by Arsenal as well as AC Milan, Benfica, Lyon and Real Madrid. This sponsorship has therefore come under pressure in recent months for their connection to atrocities committed in Sudan as well as the contradiction of Arsenal’s much publicised climate commitments. More broadly, clubs complicit in both pollution and authoritarian abuses include PSG (through Qatar Airways), Atletico Madrid (Riyadh Air) and Manchester City (Etihad).
All this means that there has never been a better time to turn up the pressure on clubs who choose to promote harmful organisations. Fossil Free Football is helping concerned fans find each other and begin campaigns within their own clubs targeted at individual sponsors. Initial meetings will be held in February on Monday 17th and Wednesday 26th.
Interested supporters can register to attend these meetings here. More information is available online or by contacting @fossilfreefootball on social media.