Sustainability within sports organizations - Finding a new growth engine

The world has changed overnight and incorporating sustainability within the corporate strategy is more important than ever. Smart sport organizations are incorporating environmental, social and governance criteria into their business decisions and developing guidelines and metrics to minimize the negative impact their core businesses have on the environment, the community, and the economy.

As sustainability practices/initiatives become extensively adopted, innovative sport organizations are pursuing strategies that will allow them to adjust their business model and deliver truly sustainable results. This constant focus on sustainability by the world’s top organizations (Sport teams, International Federations, Leagues, among others) is pushing long-term value as main point for strategy development and, those who move first will unravel considerable business advantages.

Understanding the benefits of sustainability measures:

Inserting sustainability within the corporate strategy is an increasing requirement for sport organizations to protect their business results and sportive performance, as it offers an opportunity to drive top line growth and long-term competitive advantage through:

• New sources of growth and innovation.
• Brand differentiation and loyalty (consumer values are shifting).
• Enhancing the fan experience.
• Cost efficiencies from reduced waste and resource consumption.
• Talent attraction and retention.
• Superior long-term financial performance and organizational resilience.
• Basic legal compliance.
• Ability to anticipate and respond effectively to health and safety risks.

Benefits of implementing sustainability strategies are considerable, that is the reason why if sport organizations do not respond to social, environmental, and economic problems they may struggle to remain competitive or worse, to survive.

Inserting sustainability into the corporate strategy:

With sustainability on the rise, here are some actions that may help you incorporate sustainability within the organization:

1. Sports organization need to shift their attitude towards sustainability. It is time to think of sustainability not just as tradeoff or a “nice to have”, but as a requirement for long-term success.
2. Assess what is the meaning of sustainability for the team/athletes, employees, competitors, and followers, and gather information which describes the current situation of the organization.
3. Detect opportunities and merge sustainability objectives with overall business/sportive goals by identifying global trends and pondering the following: Stakeholder importance and impact to the organization.
4. Assess where and how is it possible to enhance sustainability efforts within the current business model of the organization. Then, these measures should be evaluated and prioritized.
5. Once you have agreed on concrete objectives, define the steps needed to start executing each of these measures/actions and communicate this commitment to society and stakeholders.

Bear in mind that proper implementation of this type of strategy, which meets the requirements of the economic, environmental, and social criteria, need that sustainability and business strategies become one. Thus, here are some ideas to build a sustainability strategy closely integrated with the core plans on the organization:

• Understand what is important to the organization and its stakeholders and prioritize.
• Find what support may your stakeholders be able to provide.
• Line up the sustainability strategy of the organization with its corporate strategy.
• Integrate this strategy within every function of the organization (every department must reflect similar sustainability objectives).
• Consider how to embed these actions into key organizational ways of working.
• Go beyond the usual selection criteria applied to potential new projects/initiatives.
• Develop metrics coherent with the strategy to evaluate performance and improvements.
• Constantly evaluate your organization’s readiness, abilities, and capacities.

If sports organizations are genuine about incorporating sustainability into their business, they should pursue a holistic method that looks beyond their own challenges and consider the broader pressures that are changing the way the world works.

It is clear that many organizations are facing many difficult decisions during the COVID-19 crisis and even though achieving true sustainability may seem overwhelming, those that take the leap will lead the shift to a more sustainable industry and gain competitive advantage by doing so.