Pre-season friendlies and sustainability
What can we learn from clubs' plans for their 2023/24 pre-season tours?
Key points
Pre-season friendlies provide a focus on important sustainability issues for the game.
Less long-haul travel and matches in extreme weather would be good for players and good for the planet.
A full assessment of the carbon footprint of these matches is needed given their unique nature.
The scale of these games is growing and takes place in the midst of plans for the growth of other tournaments.
Sustainability goals need to be taken much more seriously when considering future pre-season plans.
Clubs have more control over these fixtures than others, so opportunities for them to make changes are greater.
Introduction
With the 2022/23 season at its end, the English Premier League has published details of the 2023/24 pre-season plans of 15 clubs.
This post will look at the sustainability issues these fixtures raise.
A number of motivations
Pre-season friendlies are an opportunity for players to get match-fit and to test tactics and form. They differ from other fixtures in the football calendar, as clubs have greater choice and flexibility in how to approach them. This includes on the timing of matches, opponents, locations and the openness to fans. Alongside this, clubs and organisers note other benefits and reasons for them.
The new Soccer Champions Tour series in the USA features Arsenal and Manchester United and other European clubs. Its creators say it will
“support the continued global growth of top-tier sports franchises by organizing high-profile, competitive events for the millions of fans that live outside the domestic markets of the biggest clubs.”
The new Premier League Series, also in the USA has six Premier League clubs taking part. It is being promoted as “part of the League’s ongoing commitment to its US-based fans” with “high-profile matches and pre-season training camps". It will "be supported by a range of events for fans and local community groups.”
The Coupang Play Series in Korea will feature Manchester City and Athletico Madrid. The organisers, say it will provide “opportunities to play important pre-season matches, train at elite facilities and commercialise the club and their brand in one of their key markets.”
Alongside this, a number of club press releases draw on quotes from their commercial leads to promote their involvement. For instance, one club says it “is set to be the most commercially lucrative pre-season tour in the club's history”.
The strong commercial aspect of pre-season matches has also been covered in-depth in this excellent article in The Athletic last year which interviewed people involved in organising them. Insights included the comprises needed on the playing side for the commercial benefits they can deliver.
Do fans like pre-season friendlies? A useful survey by Back Page Football suggests that views are very mixed. Apart from that, I’ve not come across work that clarifies this question one way or the other.
In summary, while team and player preparations for the next season are important, there is also a clear focus on the commercial side too. However, having looked at a number of articles and papers for this piece, sustainability issues have not jumped out as receiving attention. This post will sketch out some key points on that front.
Long distances
All 15 of the Premier League clubs who have announced plans for this Summer will travel outside of Europe for their matches. Most of their matches will take place in stadia with capacities north of 50,000. Many teams will play 3 games, though both Chelsea and Manchester United will play 5 games.
This compares to 10 clubs travelling outside of Europe for pre-season matches in 2022. Table 1 shows the estimated air miles travelled by these 15 clubs to be 174,923 miles. This is with 5 more clubs' plans still to be announced. The BBC calculated the air miles for all 20 clubs in pre-season last year to be 178,858 miles.
These are not like-for-like comparisons. However, indications are that air miles, and therefore climate impacts, of this travel will be higher this season than last. In tandem, the climate impact of travel by fans will likely increase too (an issue I’ll return to below).
Longer times
With more air miles goes longer journey times. Table 1 also shows that players can expect to be in the air, on average, for almost one full day for these matches. Spurs players can expect to fly for around 40hrs to Australia, Thailand and Singapore.
Further land travel will also be needed to and from airports, hotels, and grounds. This will add further to the travel burden on players. In an article on player fatigue and jet lag for FIFPRO, Professor Christa Janse van Rensburg recently said "When we consider their health and wellbeing, footballers would benefit from an international match calendar where they don’t have to travel back and forth long distances".
Dealing with extreme weather
Alongside the lengthy travel, these games are during the height of Summer in many parts of the world. Table 2 suggests that at least 19 of the 32 games featuring Premier League teams will kick off with likely local temperatures of 28°C or over. This is before humidity, sun exposure and other factors help calculate the ‘Wet Bulb Globe Temperature’ (WBGT).
These are local temperatures, not necessarily temperatures in the stadia. Air conditioning and other cooling systems at some stadia can help reduce temperatures. On extreme heat, FIFPRO “recommend that if there is a WBGT between 28-32°C, cooling breaks should take place around the 30th minute and 75th minute. If there is a WBGT of more than 32°C, training and matches should be rescheduled".
Impacts
According to Football Insider, “There is a belief at Anfield that the lengthy travel and commercial commitments relating to that initial trip to Asia [in 2022 to Thailand and Singapore] cut into valuable early training time, resulting in a slew of fitness problems this term”.
Liverpool have scaled back plans for this year’s pre-season. They plan for only two matches, both at one location. That said they will still be among the clubs travelling the furthest, to Singapore. Local temperatures at kick-off times could be 28°C or more with humidity.
But it’s also not all just about the heat. With climate change comes an increased likelihood of other types of extreme weather too. During the 2013 Premier League Asia Trophy, there was days of non-stop rain. This led to matches being abbreviated to 80mins, training being cancelled and player injuries.
These matches take place against a backdrop where the World Meteorological Organization predicts global temperatures are set to reach new records in the next five years. According to the UN Secretary-General, we are clearly off track to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. This means more extreme weather and more impacts on games are to be expected.
Measuring and reducing emissions
In November last year, the UN Secretary-General stated the importance of businesses reducing “all emissions - direct, indirect and those originating from supply chains”.
To cut these emissions you first need to measure them. A few estimates have been made of the CO2 emissions due to team flights to these pre-season matches. These include by the BBC and also those carried out here in table 1. Both use cautious methods that may well be under-estimates. Another, by a data visualisation company, has produced much larger figures.
However, identifying team flight emissions only scratches the surface of the full picture. This requires looking at the full range of different “scopes” of emissions.
In regard to pre-season matches, there are distinct challenges in assessing their full carbon footprint. For instance, fan travel is known to make up a big part of overall match-day emissions. Fans travel internationally to attend these games. Yet, I’ve not seen anything published on the scale on which they do, nor the travel distances of fans based within the host country.
Alongside this, other European clubs are taking part in these and other pre-season matches, and the full extent of the number of clubs flying globally for these matches has not been looked at. The full impact of pre-season friendlies from all these teams needs establishing.
A fair starting assumption is that emissions per match will be more than from domestic games. That said, an assessment of the full carbon footprint of these matches is urgently needed. And all this before considering the message that this extensive flying by teams may send out to fans more generally.
What next?
The future picture for pre-season matches is not clear. The Premier League Series has been described as the first step on a roadmap to hold competitive matches in strategic markets. However, no public statement has been made on plans for future years. The same goes for the new Soccer Champions Tour which also includes leading European clubs.
There is no indication that clubs intend to dial back their involvement and the trend is towards further expansion. Alongside this, a number of other new tournaments are in the offing from FIFA. These include a beefed-up Men’s World Club tournament, a series of intercontinental friendlies and a new Women’s Club World Cup. These will add to a crowded calendar of matches, and lead to more international travel by fans and teams, and concerns about player welfare.
There is no evidence that the sustainability impacts of these additional tournaments and matches were considered before decisions and significant concerns about their impact must be addressed too.
Pre-season friendlies are only one part of a bigger picture of club and national team matches where there are big sustainability concerns and strong arguments that a change of approach is needed.
Where pre-season friendlies differ from other matches is in the accountability for them lying more clearly with clubs, rather than split between clubs and organising bodies.
This means that changes in their approaches could present quicker wins for clubs committed to prioritising emissions reduction. In addition, there would also be benefits to players and this would send an important signal out to organising bodies about the need to urgently tackle emissions in other tournaments.
Decisions on pre-season friendlies involve taking into a range of different drivers. Sustainability issues have not featured prominently enough in the discussions and decisions. They should become a central concern to them going forward.
Methodology note
Table 1 - Start and end locations for flights assume the nearest commercial airports with direct flights. Flight miles and duration are calculated using the Air Miles Calculator. Emissions are calculated using the IATA CO2 calculator, assuming business class and the default aircraft type returned by the calculator. 30 players and staff are assumed for each club. The calculations do not take into account any other overseas training camps may have.
Emissions will be higher if first-class flights or private charter planes are used. Other, non-CO2, emissions from flying are not included in the calculations in the table. The evidence says the consequences of these other emissions “may be up to three times worse than the warming caused by aviation’s CO2 emissions”. In addition, the Aviation Environment Federation has also noted that there is a wide range of online calculators to estimate emissions producing very different results. The estimates provided by the IATA calculator used here are at the conservative end of those tested for this post.
Table 2 - The local temperature at kick-off is from hourly historical hourly averages returned by Weather Spark.
I’d be very grateful for any feedback on this methodology and keen to find ways to improve it. And as ever, your comments and feedback on anything to do with this post is super helpful.
Fran James (he/him)
Football and Climate Change Newsletter
@fbandclimate
footballandclimatechange@gmail.com