At a recent event run by the Global Sustainability Benchmark in Sports, Christian Hartmann, the company’s CEO, asked experts from a law firm what they saw for the future of sustainability in sport. “I was thinking they would say regulators and governments will start to set reporting standards [for things like emissions]”. Instead, the legal experts told him: “We’re expecting more lawsuits, because these organisations are claiming something that is not actually the case.”
The claims those lawyers described can broadly be categorised as ‘greenwashing’. This is the idea that sports events, leagues, and individual clubs around the world are making a lot of noise about environmental initiatives which fail to stand up to scrutiny. If they continue claiming to be eco-friendly without being so, then the legal minds Hartmann spoke to reckon clubs and leagues will start being taken to court over false assertions.
Greenwashing isn’t exactly new, and it’s found in...