Soccer, also known as football, is the world’s most popular sport, with billions of fans and a vast global reach. While football is the commonly used term in most countries, soccer is widely recognized in regions like North America. Regardless of the name, the sport’s environmental impact remains a major concern, and its carbon footprint is growing.
Recent studies, particularly the New Weather Institute report “Dirty Tackle: The growing carbon footprint of football“, estimate that soccer’s total carbon footprint is around 64-66 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) annually. This is comparable to the annual emissions of Austria and 60% more than those of Uruguay.
Knowing the main causes of soccer’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is key to reducing its impact. So, what are the main culprits of the game’s growing carbon emissions?
The Major Contributors to Soccer’s Carbon Emissions
Here are the top three major sources of the sports’ rising GHG emissions:
Sponsored Emissions: The Hidden Environmental Cost
One of the largest sources of football’s emissions is its sponsorship deals with high-carbon industries. The New Weather Institute report shows that 75% of soccer’s carbon footprint comes from sponsorships. This includes polluting companies like fossil fuel corporations and airlines. These deals promote high-emission lifestyles, such as frequent air travel and gas-guzzling vehicles.
For example, FIFA signed a deal in 2024 with Saudi oil giant Aramco, the world’s largest fossil fuel company. UEFA also has ongoing sponsorships with Qatar Airways and Emirates, both major airline polluters.
- The 2022 FIFA World Cup had four big sponsorship deals, causing over 16 million tCO2e. Also, the top four European clubs with airline sponsorships added 8 million tCO2e.
RELATED: UEFA’s Green Goals: $7.6M Climate Fund for EURO 2024 Carbon Footprint
Travel Emissions: The Heavy Cost of Mobility
Soccer matches require significant travel, both for teams and spectators. The reports highlight that spectator travel is the biggest contributor to non-sponsorship emissions. Air and car travel make up the bulk of these emissions, particularly for international competitions.
- One Men’s FIFA World Cup match emits 44,000-72,000 tCO2e, equivalent to 31,500 to 51,500 average UK cars driven for a year.
- A single English Premier League (EPL) match emits around 1,700 tCO2e, with spectator travel accounting for half of this.
- Matches in international club competitions increase emissions by 50% due to air travel.
- The FIFA World Cup, including qualification matches, emitted 6.5 million tCO2e over four years.
Expanding tournaments and increasing international matches worsen the problem. The 2026 World Cup in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will need a lot of air travel. This will greatly raise emissions. The growth of international club competitions, like UEFA’s Champions League and FIFA’s new Club World Cup, makes this problem worse.
Efforts to promote greener travel among spectators remain insufficient. While some clubs encourage fans to use public transport, overall adoption is low. More teams should step up. They could offer discounted match tickets for fans who use low-carbon transport.
Stadium Construction: Arenas of Pollution
Stadiums cause a lot of carbon emissions. This happens both during their construction and while they are maintained. The 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar saw the construction of new stadiums emitting 270,000 tCO2e per stadium. Major clubs continue to renovate or build new stadiums, adding to their carbon footprint.
- New stadiums for top-tier clubs like Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford resulted in significant emissions.
- Clubs like Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Barcelona have large stadium expansion projects underway, which will further increase emissions.
Moreover, stadium energy use contributes to ongoing emissions. Many stadiums still use non-renewable energy. They have high electricity use on match days. While some clubs have implemented solar panels and LED lighting, these efforts must be expanded across all leagues.
Green Goals: Are Soccer’s Climate Commitments Enough?
Despite these staggering numbers, soccer’s governing bodies have done little to curb its carbon footprint. FIFA and UEFA have pledged to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2040, but their actions seem to contradict these commitments.
- FIFA’s continued partnership with Aramco directly undermines its climate promises.
- UEFA’s expansion of the Champions League and FIFA’s decision to increase the World Cup to 48 teams in 2026 will only lead to higher emissions.
- Top clubs keep signing big deals with airlines and fossil fuel companies. This trend makes carbon-heavy activities seem normal.
Also, overloading players with longer schedules can harm the environment in other ways. Players travel more often, which raises emissions from team transport. Moreover, medical treatments for overworked athletes add an extra environmental burden.
Notably, the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup, to be co-hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, further stirs environmental concerns. The tournament will expand to 48 teams. This means more travel and better infrastructure are needed. This leads to higher GHG emissions. Recent developments have further highlighted these concerns.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup Emissions
In March 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a task force to oversee preparations for the event. This task force aims to leverage the World Cup to promote American excellence and attract foreign investment.
However, Trump’s assertion that political and economic tensions with co-host nations Canada and Mexico would “enhance the excitement” of the tournament has raised eyebrows. This view might overlook the urgent environmental issues tied to holding such a big event.
Estimates suggest that the event could generate over 3.6 million tonnes of CO₂. Most emissions come from air travel, stadium construction, and fans getting to games. These exceed the emissions from the 2022 Qatar World Cup, which was one of the most polluting ever.
These changes highlight the need for strong plans to reduce the environmental impact of the 2026 World Cup.
Kicking Off Sustainability: A Playbook for Change
Soccer has the power to lead climate action given its global influence. Here’s how the sport can reduce its environmental impact:
- End High-Carbon Sponsorships: Just as tobacco advertising was banned in sports, governing bodies must phase out sponsorships with high-carbon emitters.
- Reduce Air Travel: Football clubs and leagues should encourage train and bus travel for domestic matches. Ticketing policies can prioritize local fans to cut travel emissions.
- Smaller, Regional Tournaments: FIFA and UEFA should prioritize regional competitions. This change can help cut down on long-haul flights.
- Sustainable Stadiums: Clubs should invest in low-carbon stadiums. They can use renewable energy sources like solar panels and LED lighting.
- Encourage Low-Carbon Fan Behavior: Clubs can offer incentives for public transport use, cycling, and electric vehicle travel to matches.
- Stronger Climate Rules: Football federations need to set sustainability standards for competitions. Clubs must hit carbon reduction goals to take part.
- Player-Led Advocacy: Many professional soccer players are already speaking out about climate change. Their influence can drive awareness and push governing bodies toward stronger climate commitments.
Time for Football to Act
Soccer’s carbon footprint is undeniable, but so is its potential to drive climate action. With its unmatched global reach, football can be a powerful force for sustainability. However, without real leadership from FIFA, UEFA, and major clubs, emissions will continue to rise.
The moment to act is now—before climate change threatens the very sport billions love. If football is truly committed to securing its future, it must move beyond words and take real, measurable action to cut emissions across all levels of the game.
The post Soccer’s Carbon Footprint: How Dirty Is This Sports? appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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