Reports

Hit for Six: The Danger Zone, opens in a new tab, British Association for Sustainable Sport, Climate Central, The Next Test, Front Runners, (2025). As an outdoor summer pursuit played over multiple hours, cricket is regarded as the most climate‑vulnerable pitch sport, and its susceptibilities are most apparent in the nation where passion for the game burns brightest: India. For this follow‑up report to the original Hit For Six, we have focused on examining the impacts of the climate crisis—particularly rising heat—on a country that is home to most of the world’s one billion cricket fans. Section looking specifically on impacts to Australia, pp.26-27.Hit For Six: The Impact of Climate Change on Cricket, opens in a new tab, University of Leeds, British Association for Sustainable Sport, University of Portsmouth, (2019). Section looking specifically on impacts to Australia, pp.28-29.
Research and analysis: Exploring the financial implications of climate change on grassroots sport, opens in a new tab, Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), (updated 11 September 2025). Commissioned to assess the financial and environmental challenges climate change poses to grassroots sport in the UK. This research analysed both the impacts of grassroots sport on the environment (strand 1) and the current and potential future impacts of climate change on grassroots sport (strand 2). It also explored the opportunities for reducing the impact that grassroots sport has on the environment, as well as adaptations that can be made to ensure the sector’s long-term environmental and financial sustainability (strand 3).
Pitches in Peril: How Climate Change is Threatening Football - From World Cup Stadiums to Grassroots Pitches, Common Goal, opens in a new tab, Football for Future, (2025). The report delivers the first IPCC-aligned climate risk assessment of all 2026 World Cup venues, alongside 2030 and 2034 host venues, as well as the childhood pitches of players such as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. It also highlights the demand for action, with a survey of 3,600 fans across North America showing overwhelming support for football to lead on sustainability.10 of 16 2026 World Cup stadiums already breach safe-play heat limits, with nearly 90% expected to require adaptation by 2050.
Every grassroots pitch analysed has already passed unplayability thresholds for hazards including heat, flooding, drought, or wildfires.
By 2050, two-thirds of the childhood pitches of Messi, Ronaldo, Mohamed Salah, and Kylian Mbappé will be too hot to play.
In the Global South, players already face seven times more unplayable heat days than those in the Global North.
More than 90% of 3,600 North American fans said the World Cup should lead on sustainability, while over half reported experiencing climate-related match disruptions.
Nature Action: Sport’s Best Offense and Defense Against the Climate Crisis, opens in a new tab, Sports For Nature, (April 2025). For many sports organisations, climate action often centres around reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, fewer recognize the full impact they have on nature or the vital role nature plays in stabilizing the climate. To address these challenges effectively, it’s essential to understand how climate and nature are interconnected and why protecting both is critical to the future of sports. Highlights some of the impacts of how sports, and especially sports events, can affect nature and climate, such as: carbon emissions; event timing clashing with nature such as breeding or migration seasons, deforestation and/or habitat destruction for event spaces, light and noise pollution, other waste and pollution, energy intensive venues, or introducing invasive species (accidental or deliberate, e.g. turf). The report also provides examples of actions sports can take that benefit climate and nature more broadly. Illustration: The Hidden Impact of Sports, opens in a new tab, Sports For Nature, (April 2025).
Rallying for Resilience: Keeping Children and Youth Active in a Changing Climate, opens in a new tab, [Canada], 2024 ParticipACTION Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, (May 2024). With the number of annual weather alerts in Canada having more than doubled in the past 10 years, it’s time for Canada to recognize the impacts of a changing climate as an added barrier to getting children and youth active where they live, learn and play. Physical activity can help mitigate the negative health impacts of climate change, and concerted efforts from multiple sectors and people are needed to get and keep children and youth physically active in a changing climate – inside and outside, rain or shine.
Rings of Fire II, opens in a new tab, British Association for Sustainable Sport, Front Runners, (2024). Ahead of Paris 2024, and building on the first Rings of Fire report in 2021, elite athletes from across 15 sports – including 11 Olympians – join forces with leading climate scientists and thermal physiologists to examine the serious threat extreme heat poses to competitors at the Paris Olympics. Athletes express their concerns about the dangers to performance, health and even the fear of heat-related deaths. Alongside athlete testimony, the report outlines a series of recommendations safeguard athletes and protect the sports we love from the impacts of climate change.
What’s stopping us? Applying psychology to accelerate climate action in sport, opens in a new tab, Latter, B., Whitmarsh, L., Hampton, S. and Sambrook, K., Sport Positive, UN Sports for Climate Action, and Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), (November 2024). Sports are having to change how and where activities and competitions take place and are feeling the effects of climate change on sportspeople’s health and performance. In recent years, the FIS Para World Snowboard Championships in Spain have been postponed due to lack of snow, heatwaves have impacted cricket in India, and record rainfall flooded stadiums and training centres in Brazil. However, sport also contributes to climate change, increasing greenhouse gas emissions through training, competitions, equipment and facilities involving sportspeople themselves as well as wider organisations and fans. Sports are increasingly recognised as having a positive role to play in climate action both in reducing the sector’s own emissions and the influence it can have on others. Intended for decision-makers in sport, this report brings together existing climate change research from psychology and insights from interviews with sportspeople and organisations.
Three Years of Progress: A Review of Sustainability Across the 2021-2024 Olympic Cycle, opens in a new tab, The Sport Ecology Group and The Sustainability Report, (2024). For this roundup, following on from the conversation in 2021, all sporting federations participating in the Paris 2024 Olympics, as well as those participating in Los Angeles 2028, were analyzed based on their commitments and actions to environmental sustainability during this last Olympic cycle (2021- 2024). Of the 36 sports federations reviewed for this report: 17 had a sustainability strategy
10 had a full-time staff person working on sustainability
18 had published sustainability guidelines for events
23 had signed the United Nations's Sports for Climate Action Framework
11 had signed the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Sports for Nature Framework
Case study: Reducing community waste - a team sport, opens in a new tab, Sport Environment Alliance, (2025). In 2024, the Sports Environment Alliance (SEA) partnered with five of our member clubs — Fremantle Dockers, West Coast Eagles, Western Force Rugby, Vasse Soccer Club and Swamp Rats Cricket Club — to deliver the Reducing Community Waste: A Team Sport project, with support from the Government of Western Australia and the WasteSorted Community Education Grants 2023 program. The project focused on reducing waste across community and professional sport environments using a mix of education, communication, engagement, and practical tools such as WasteSorted resources and on-site audits.
Game Changer II: The impact of climate change on sports in the UK, opens in a new tab, British Association for Sustainable Sport (BASIS), (2023). Update of the 2018 report, reviews three of the four original sports (football, cricket and golf) five years on and it makes sobering reading as it describes the increasing impacts of climate change on sport. As before, the report combines foundational science, with a section by Prof Ed Hawkins of Reading University (the originator of the ‘climate stripes’), with insights from athletes and players who have experienced disruption, along with the facts and figures that show the trends.
The heat is on: how the sport and recreation sector can mitigate climate change and adapt to its consequences, opens in a new tab, Sport NZ, (2023). Sport and recreation will not be immune to the consequences of climate change. The consequences are both direct – where and when activity can take place, and how people can participate – and indirect, as local, national, and commercial priorities and consumer behaviour and social expectations change in response to climate change.
The Snow Thieves - How High-Carbon Sponsors are Melting Winter Sports’, opens in a new tab, Badvertising and New Weather Sweden, (February 2023). The future of winter sports is under threat from the very companies that sponsor it. This report identifies a minimum of 107 high carbon sponsorship deals within winter sports, despite its increasing vulnerability to climate change and rising global temperatures.
The Future of Australian Sport: The second report: Megatrends shaping the sport sector over the coming decades, Australian Sports Commission (ASC), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), (2022). This report identifies six megatrends that will shape the Australian sports sector over the coming decade and beyond and provides a decadal update on the first ground-breaking report, Climate and environmental impacts and sustainability are highlighted under two of the pillars: Our best sporting side: Safe, sustainable and inclusive for all - suggests that in the future there will be increased pressure for sports organisations to be environmentally sustainable.
The perfect pivot: Adapting in an uncertain world - Australian sporting organisations will need to be flexible and ingenious over the coming decades to adjust to climate change, including more extreme weather events and increasing temperatures.
Green Transition and Sport At All Levels - Research Paper, opens in a new tab, European Commission, (2022). The main aim of this initiative is to provide some orientation for sport organisations on how to contribute effectively to hastening the transition to a more sustainable economy and society.
AFL Fans' Perceptions of Climate Change and of ALF Action on Climate Change, opens in a new tab, Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, (2021). This report documents the findings of a survey of 567 Australians and their views on AFL action on climate change. The research was undertaken by the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub (MCCCRH) on behalf of FrontRunners, a movement of athletes working to protect the future of sport. Four out of five AFL fans believe sport in Australia is feeling the impacts of climate change and a majority would support their club and the league taking action against it.
Just over three-quarters of respondents said they were worried about climate change and more than 80 per cent believed climate change would cause personal harm.
Around 60 per cent of respondents agreed the AFL has a responsibility to help clubs reduce their carbon footprints and just under two-thirds agreed clubs should take actions to reduce their own footprints.
More than half of paying member fans suggested they would be willing to support their club in taking action against climate change with a slight increase in membership fees.
only 15% of fans were not in favour of AFL clubs communicating their climate action with their fan bases. This suggests clubs could be a safe starting place to begin climate communication initiatives.
Game, Set, Match: Calling time on climate inaction, opens in a new tab, Martin Rice, Ella Weisbrot, Simon Bradshaw, et al., Climate Council, (2021). The report describes the influence of climate change on extreme weather events, with a specific focus on how each type of event can affect specific sports. For example, heatwaves on tennis; drought on cricket; bushfire smoke on soccer/football; intense rainfall on community sport; sea-level rise and shifting storms on surfing. The report looks at climate projections and how summer sport might become unplayable without rapid emissions reductions and significant climate adaptations. Next, we examine how climate affects sport from a health, social, economic and infrastructure perspective. Finally, we examine climate solutions and the positive role that sport can play. We provide case studies describing how professional and community sports are tackling climate change by, for example, powering stadiums and facilities with renewables, encouraging active and public transport to and from venues, adopting carbon neutral strategies, using their platform to demonstrate and call for stronger action on climate change, and switching from fossil fuel-backed corporate sponsorship to renewables and other climate friendly sponsorship.
Stepping up to the plate: The crucial role sport must play in climate action, opens in a new tab, 17 Sport, (2021). Authors of the report outline ways sport is already activating to combat climate change, as well as highlighting why it must push harder and how the industry can bring climate action to life.
Playing against the clock: Global sport, the climate emergency and the case for rapid change, opens in a new tab, David Goldblatt, Rapid Transition Alliance, (June 2020). Climate change is touching every aspect of human life and global sport is no exception: in 2019, the Rugby World Cup was disrupted by unprecedented pacific typhoons; in early 2020, the Australian Tennis Open was disrupted by the smoke blowing in from the country’s devastating bush fires. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were forced to move long distance running events north of the capital as the city’s sweltering summer weather now makes them impossible to run. This report provides a provisional estimate of the impact of global sport on the climate and warns that the climate emergency will have far more severe consequences for several sports.
Mitigating biodiversity impacts of sports events, opens in a new tab, Brownlie, Susie, Bull, Joseph W., Stubbs David, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), (2020). These guidelines focus on the often complex links between biodiversity and sport, and highlight that sports events can also benefit biodiversity. Each event offers an opportunity to raise public awareness of the value of nature and influence attitudes towards biodiversity and its conservation. These guidelines provide an overview of the issues and risks.
Sports and urban biodiversity: A framework for achieving mutual benefits for nature and sports in cities, opens in a new tab, Wheeler, M., Grossinger, R., Ndayishimiye, E., et al., International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), (2020). The guide provides a set of principles to help sports federations, local organising committees, developers, investors and local authorities to incorporate the needs of urban nature and biodiversity into their planning process. From setting up ecological monitoring systems to improving the management of habitats, there is a range of ways in which the sports industry can help urban nature flourish.
Think Piece: Climate Change, opens in a new tab, Sport New Zealand, (2020). This think piece takes a high-level view of the dimensions of a changing climate including: The science: the current position, levels of confidence and potential forecasts for the globe and New Zealand; Social impacts: the impact on people in terms of societal change, health and consumer behaviour; Economic consequences: the concerns of the financial sector both in terms of economic stability and future business positioning. Addressing the issue: energy transition and political action required to mitigate climate change; The role for sport and recreation in addressing climate change.
Caught behind: Climate change, extreme heat and the Boxing Day Test, opens in a new tab, Australian Conservation Foundation, (2019). Brings together climate, media and sports research to: Review the current management of extreme heat in Australian cricket, Investigate cricket's contributions to the risks posed by climate change, and Question the viability of continuing to host the Boxing Day Test in December under a "business as usual" greenhouse gas scenario. This report presents an opportunity for the governing bodies of Australian cricket to display leadership on climate change: not only to adapt to the changing impacts of extreme heat, but to play their part in avoiding the worst impacts in the future.
Heat, humanity, and the hockey stick: Climate change and sport in Canberra, opens in a new tab, Professor Kate Auty, Caitlin Roy, ACT Government, Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment, (2019). Levels of participation in physical activity, social capital, and the built and natural environment will be adversely affected by climate change. Heat, water availability, wind speed, humidity, increased bushfires and reduced air quality may lead to: decreased or more sporadic participation rates; disengagement, inactivity and associated health impacts and costs; an increased number and seriousness of injuries due to pollution asthma, muscle and bone injuries, heat exhaustion, hyperthermia, and heat stroke; and people pursuing different sport and physical recreation opportunities.
Climate change may impact infrastructure and the sports economy in the following ways: present challenges to use and management of sporting facilities; damage and destruction of facilities, including surfaces and infrastructure; increased maintenance costs; reduced revenue resulting from delays and cancellations; an increased number of insurance claims and costs implications of litigation; and innovative design solutions for sport and recreation infrastructure. The insurer of last resort will often be government or the owner of public sporting grounds.
Mitigating biodiversity impacts of new sports venues, opens in a new tab, Brownlie, Susie, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), (2019). Highlights that sport stakeholders have an opportunity to make a real contribution in reversing the current negative trends in biodiversity conservation. When well-designed and executed, new sport venues and temporary facilities can actually achieve conservation and restoration of biodiversity, and therefore become positive agents of change, strengthening the environmental legacy for the hosting community and the broader sporting industry.
Playing for our Planet: How sports win from being sustainable, opens in a new tab, UEFA and Green Sports Alliance, (May 2018). Environmental leadership is an increasingly important issue for all sport stakeholders and major sport events. Environmentally conscious operations are no longer solely a focus of visionary thinking but have become a vital operational and economic requirement for federations, teams, rights holders, host cities, leisure activities and partners linked to the sport movement. UEFA, WWF and the Green Sports Alliance have led the development of a report which is designed to bring together good practices by key stakeholders of the sport movement: from federations, teams, fans, sporting goods manufacturers and venue operators, to sponsoring partners, environmental organisations and policymakers. Its main objective is to highlight innovative solutions which enhance the environmental and sustainable performance of sports.
Sport and biodiversity, opens in a new tab, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), (2018). This guide is designed to help decision makers understand these potential impacts, and to present options for mitigating them, as well as for maximising opportunities to use sport as a way to promote and enhance biodiversity conservation.
Taking the Field: Advancing energy and water efficiency in sports venues, opens in a new tab, U.S. Department of Energy, National Institute of Building Sciences and Green Sports Alliance, (2017). Stadiums and sports arenas represent an important link to the nation’s values and priorities. Over 240 million fans visit these venues annually and this generates $22.6 billion in annual revenue; the sports sector has a significant influence on the national economy and culture. Many of these venues have taken action to improve energy and water use efficiency to reduce operating costs and reduce the stress on the environment. Essential to any energy, water, and sustainability strategy is understanding current performance and setting realistic goals for continued improvement. The biggest challenge is the lack of metrics and associated data to establish current performance, at both an individual venue level and across the building type. The National Institute of Building Sciences, the Green Sports Alliance, and the Environmental Protection Agency are working to fill this gap. This report identifies the potential impact that addressing efficiencies in sports venues can have on reducing energy and water use nationwide and sets a path forward to achieving efficiency targets. The report begins with an overview of the extent of sports venues in the United States, then looks at what progress has been made. It then summarises the significant efforts to reduce energy and water use already underway across multiple venue types and within leagues and conferences. While progress is being made, challenges still remain and these are highlighted. Finally, this report identifies a path forward, building off the lessons learned by industry leaders and best practices from other sectors.
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Reports

Working together for Australian sport
