How to tackle fossil fuel sponsorships within sports - Ban Fossil Ads Webinar 8th of April
Watch a game of football or live coverage of a ski competition and you will be exposed to a deluge of adverts for major climate polluters from airlines, to oil and gas and car companies. But now, in an echo of how tobacco sponsorship was once everywhere in sport, this phenomenon is increasingly being called out as public awareness grows over the urgency of tackling climate breakdown. Campaigners are raising the issue at sports events around the world.
On the 8th April the Ban Fossil Ads Webinar looked at this topic in depth, examining how sports fans can fight the rising tide of fossil fuel adverts in sports, and what campaigns have already been successful internationally.
Andrew Simms from the New Weather Institute and Badvertising campaign explained why fossil fuel sponsorships need to end in the middle of a climate crisis, highlighting the precedent of how tobacco sponsorship and advertising used to be everywhere in sports, but now seems like a bizarre memory, thanks to the ban on tobacco advertising.
From Zimbabwe, there were inspiring stories on how to fight fossil fuel sponsorships within football, with Nyasha Mukapiko from the Magamba Network outlining their campaign targeting the TotalEnergies sponsorship deal with the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).
The Kick Total Out of AFCON campaign began in Ivory Coast on January 13th, demanding that TotalEnergies end new drilling on the continent and seriously invest in renewables, while also challenging Total's blatant sportswashing - which is an attempt to distract from its destructive, polluting footprint on the continent. The campaign is run under the umbrella of the Kick Polluters Out movement which is coordinated by Magamba with an East Africa content hub run by Buni Media (Kenya), and West Africa work covered by Journal Rappé (Senegal).
The campaign produced an English language Total Energies Parody Infomercial for Anglophone Africa and an Oil United VS Green Team video, produced together with Magamba’s Senegal and Cote D'Ivoire teams. The videos went viral on social media, and made waves across global media, ultimately being mentioned in more than 26 media outlets including The Daily Mirror (UK), Forbes Magazine, The Daily Maverick, DW (Germany), Le Monde, and Citizen. Young people on the continent also goty involved, holding up placards outside Total stations attacking the company’s sport-swashing tactics and sharing on social media.
The campaign forced Total to respond, with the company denying green-washing allegations, saying to Le Monde that "We want people to know our 'multiple energies' approach and about our 'ambition' to be a major actor in the energy transition committed to being net zero by 2050" - which in itself seems to be an extremely apt description of green-washing. The campaign led to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) requesting that African journalists not publish anything negative about Total Energies AFCON, to “focus on the unity of Africa and the game”.
The Kick Polluters Out campaign built a new and unique climate movement that brought together unlikely allies from across the African continent and beyond, including Power Shift Africa, Don't Gas Africa, Greenpeace Africa, and Fossil Free Football among many others. As a result, the campaign hashtag #KickTotalOutOfAFCON reached over 9 million people and created over 60 million impressions (and counting!)
Stephen Horn from the Politically Aweh satirical news show in South Africa also spoke about how the show used comedy and explanatory journalism to expose the problems with TotalEnergies’ sponsorship of African football. He showed video clips from the episode and a satirical sketch the team produced to highlight the way oil companies use sponsorships, PR and advertising to distract us from their pollution.
Stephen also spoke about the chilling effect fossil fuel sponsorships have on an athlete’s ability to speak out against harmful sponsorships by big polluters. The Politically Aweh team also reached out to Amy Steel, a former player of the Diamonds, the national Australian netball team. Steel has spoken openly about the harms of fossil fuel sponsorships and supported her former teammates when they took a stand against a sponsorship by Hancock Prospecting, an Australian fossil fuel company. The team lost a $15 million sponsorship as a result of taking a stand - highlighting how difficult it is to disentangle sports from high-carbon sponsorships.
From African football we swiftly moved to Scandinavian winter sports, with Gunnar Lind from New Weather Sweden presenting the campaign Save Our Snow, aiming particularly to get The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) to drop its fossil fuel sponsors, as well as other organisations within winter sports. As part of the campaign the report Dirty Snow was launched in March, presenting a method to estimate the emissions of CO2 caused per € of sponsorship.
The Swedish elite cross-country skier and environmental scientist Björn Sandström also spoke at the webinar, highlighting a wider problem: "Many sports federations and professional athletes are marketing an idealised, elite lifestyle with high consumption of products and travel. This sends a message to younger generations leading to more people striving towards this 'glamorous life.” These are behaviours that, he says, “are leading us deeper into the climate crisis” and we have to leave behind.
Discussions touched upon the issue of economic challenges for sports organisations when dropping fossil fuel sponsors, Andrew Simms stated: “When tobacco sponsorship was dominant within sport the argument was common that sport could not survive without it - but then the advertising was ended and sport continued”.
More info and action:
Video Total Energies AFCON Plan EXPOSED
Music video Journal Rappé - OIL UNITED vs GREEN TEAM
Website Politically Aweh
Video Total Energies Afcon explainer episode
Podcast How Oil Companies Use Sport To Trick You
Report Dirty Snow
Petition Save Our Snow
Pledge Game Changer Sponsorship Pledge
Toolkit How to screen-out polluting sponsors
The webinar was part of the Badvertising campaign to kick fossil fuel sponsorships out of sports, working with Fossil Free Football, Save Our Snowand The New Weather Institute. The webinar was hosted by Reclame Fossielvrij and Badvertising Sweden.