Dirty Money: oil and gas ‘sportswashing’ now a $5.6 billion industry

Time is now to ask “uncomfortable questions” regarding sponsors who threaten future of sport, says former Australian soccer captain Craig Foster.

New Weather Institute’s report Dirty Money – How Fossil Fuel Sponsors are Polluting Sport reveals that major oil and gas companies are spending at least $5.6 billion on the sponsorship of global sport across 205 active deals.

The study finds high profile sports with the most deals are football, motor sports, rugby union and golf, with key sponsors including Aramco ($1.3 billion), Shell ($470 million), TotalEnergies ($340 million) and petrochemicals giant Ineos ($777 million).

The findings came just days ahead of the UN’s Summit of the Future. New Weather’s work on fossil fuel sponsorship of sports through its Badvertising campaign has already contributed to shifting the conversation to question the acceptability of oil and gas money in sport at a time of climate crisis. This report shows the huge scale of the issue and the urgent need to clean up the sports sponsorship world.