Oil Majors Just Love Sportswashing - This Year's Super Bowl Just One Example Among Many [View all]

As New Orleans readies to host Super Bowl LIX this Sunday, a volunteer ambassador program has been working to help welcome the hundreds of thousands of football fans streaming into the Big Easy. Who is sponsoring that program? Chevron, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers and a top climate polluter. Chevron is not the only fossil fuel company assisting New Orleans in hosting the big game. In August 2023, Entergy, an energy utility company and active player in the oil and gas business, announced that it would be a founding partner of the 2025 Super Bowl Host Committee.

Fossil fuel industry sponsorships are common in professional sports. A September 2024 analysis from the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law School found more than 60 such sponsorship deals across six pro sports leagues. The study, based on sponsorships reported by SportsPro Media’s Commercial Guides, examined deals with Big Oil firms and energy utilities that own fossil fuel assets or supply fossil gas to consumers. It is not meant to be comprehensive, however, and is almost certainly an undercount of the number of industry sponsorships in American sports, according to Emmett Institute’s communications director Evan George, who led the study. Another recent analysis of fossil fuel sponsorships in sports worldwide found 205 active deals totaling over $5.6 billion. That, too, is very likely an underestimate as most deals lack transparency about the details or precise amount of money involved, says the New Weather Institute, a UK-based think tank that produced the study.

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Zan Dubin, an environmental advocate and campaign lead, told Sierra the campaign will be stepping up its call for the Dodgers to sever sponsorship ties with the oil company. “We plan to reiterate our demand, led by Dodger fans, that the team’s management immediately drop the Phillips 66 sponsorship deal, especially now that the company is facing charges,” Dubin said. A demonstration is planned for February 12 outside the federal courthouse on East Temple Street in Los Angeles following Phillip 66’s 1 p.m. arraignment. The demand is coming at a time when the fossil fuel industry faces mounting public scrutiny and backlash. Last June, UN Secretary-General António Guterres rebuked the industry as “godfathers of climate chaos” and called on all countries to ban fossil fuel advertising. He also urged PR firms to drop fossil fuel clients and media and tech companies to cease taking fossil fuel advertising.

Apart from the Dodgers campaign, there have been very few public pressure campaigns and little organizing, at least in the US, around fossil fuel advertising and sponsorships in sports. “As far as I know, there haven’t been a lot of these types of campaigns,” George said. That may start to change, especially as more fans and athletes begin to connect the dots between the industry whose products are driving the climate crisis and corresponding impacts like extreme heat that increasingly threaten outdoor sports. “Besides sponsoring an Earth Day event, sponsoring sports has got to be the most ironic form of fossil fuel advertising. Global warming is making it harder to do so many sports, with heat waves cancelling marathons and warmer winters threatening skiing, outdoor hockey, and more,” Henn said. “There are few enjoyable sports on a hot, polluted planet.”

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https://www.sierraclub.org/Sierra/superbowl-greenwashing-big-oil-gas-companies-spike-football-sportswashing