Environmental management of sport events: a focus on European professional football

作者：Tiberio Daddi, Francesco Rizzi, Gaia Pretner, Niccolò Maria Todaro, Eleonora Annunziata, Marco Frey, Fabio Iraldo · 发表于：Sport Business and Management An International Journal · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1108/sbm-05-2020-0046 · 被引用次数：53 · 研究领域：Sport and Mega-Event Impacts、Sports, Gender, and Society、Sports Analytics and Performance

Purpose The relation between sport and sustainability is a topic that has recently raised a lot of interest among both academics and practitioners. However, in the academic literature, very few studies have investigated which solutions are implemented in football, despite its popularity, to reduce the environmental impact of its events. This study contributes to filling this gap by exploring how stadium managers tackle environmental issues for football events. Design/methodology/approach The authors have analyzed 94 sustainability reports of major sports events and conducted 6 case studies in 6 different major league stadiums around Europe in the framework of research supported by UEFA and three EU National Football Associations. Findings The heterogeneity of practices and goals at both the governance and operational level denote that stadium managers pursue environmental objectives mainly voluntarily and under local pressures. Efforts toward environmental improvement appear to depend on an economic and efficiency rationale, which translates into the adoption of technologies and operational practices characterized by short-term economic returns (i.e. energy and resources savings). As a result, operational practices outnumber governance-level practices. Practical implications The analysis clearly highlights that the fragmentation of operational practices derives from a lack of maturity of governance structures, especially when multiple actors have different – yet mutually infl...