250,000 spectators, 156 players plus their teams, countless TV and media crews, as well as suppliers are rolling up to the Royal Portrush GC in Northern Ireland for The Open these days. It’s all part of hosting a major tournament. Sporting events are mega events. It’s well known that their carbon footprint is large, if only because of the travel of fans, athletes and supporters. This is no different from music festivals, large conferences or other major events in general.
However, if you want to know exactly how big the carbon footprint of sporting events is, you have to search long for facts and figures. There is hardly any concrete reporting of CO₂ emissions, which makes golf no different from the vast majority of other sports. However, with lighthouse projects such as the International Biathlon Union’s Sustainability Report from 2024 or the annual report from the Wimbledon tennis tournament, there are positive examples against which golf events can also measure themselves. 9702 tons of CO₂ were generated by the Grand Slam tournament at Wimbledon in 2022/2023.
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News & trends about sustainability in golf
Until now, international sport has lacked a standardized method for measuring its climate impact. This is now changing thanks to a new practical guide developed by Dr. Susie Thomson, Senior Partner at the consultancy Think Beyond, together with her colleague Dr. Sam Paine: 35 organizations – including World Athletics, Liverpool FC and LIV Golf – are already using the new system, which records all emissions, from fan travel to the sale of merchandise.
The guidelines are based on established climate standards such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the UN Sports for Climate Action initiative and the Science Based Targets initiative. At the same time, the complex technical vocabulary has been translated into a sports-friendly, practical language. “It was important to us to adapt the methods to the world of sport – without deviating from international standards,” explains Tomson.
As soon as clubs have entered their data, a dashboard provides a detailed overview of emissions by category. In addition, different events can be compared within a season and developments can be tracked over several years.
The guide is part of a broader industry goal: numerous sports organizations have committed to halving their emissions by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2040 – in line with the UN Framework Programme. The challenge now is to get sports organizations and event organizers to use a standardized calculator and publish data. Not an easy task, as Thomson knows: “It’s about making everyone realize that this is an opportunity to make a positive difference. With the help of the calculator, we are trying to instil the belief that this is the right thing to do and that people will take on the task.”
While the R&A has so far refrained from publishing data or an impact report on The Open or its other tournaments, LIV Golf 2024 2024 has presented a report. According to Senior Vice President Impact and Sustainability Jake Jones, comparing with other sports organizations was also an important argument for cooperating with Think Beyond. “It was vital as in many ways a golf tournament is very similar to other events in terms of activities needing to be measured.”
The Think Beyond calculator explicitly leaves out the factor of audience mobility, which is not a problem given the fact that this segment is one of the Scope 3 emissions to be accounted for voluntarily.
According to Jones, the creation of the reporting has given the managers and players at LIV Golf a better overview of the topic of CO₂ emissions: an impact leaderboard, which illustrates the impact of the events on society in addition to CO₂ emissions, “is a key way for us to engage and educate the teams, with the sustainability indicator being relevant to teams understanding and measuring their environmental impact.”
With the measurement, LIV Golf has also defined so-called hotspots, which are now being improved at the tournaments. Jones mentions the travel behavior of fans, the overall supply chains, business travel, the energy consumption of the event and the catering.
If more event organisers and more sports organisations start to actually present their impact on the environment in data in the future, comparability will be necessary. Here, the experts from Think Beyond are also appealing to those responsible: “If you don’t enter the right positions, you won’t get the right figures,” summarises Thomson. “Let’s hope that everyone does the same.”
For golf and golf events, this also means that this sports calculator only measures actual CO₂ emissions and does not offset these against planting, grass or water areas. This may not be to the liking of some golfers, as the large green areas in golf have always been considered a major plus for the sport. On the other hand, not considering them also means being honest about your emissions. Ultimately, given the UN Framework Program, the task is obvious: CO₂ emissions must be reduced. Calculating them is the first step to success.
Foto: Mercedes-Benz