UP419 Warming Up: The Planet Can't Afford Sport's Big Event Growth Plan

Madeleine Orr is a leading sport ecologist and professor at the University of Toronto. A Forbes 30 under 30 inductee, she is the founder and co-director of The Sport Ecology Group, who consult on international climate issues for sports organizations such as the Commonwealth Secretariat, the UNEP, World Athletics, Adidas, F1 teams, and the NCAA. Madeleine has worked closely with the BBC and ESPN to further public understanding of climate issues in sport. Her book Warming Up: How Climate Change Is Changing Sport is an important contribution to the debate about sport navigates the present and near future.

This episode is sponsored by Leaders in Sport
Leaders in Sport connects the most influential people and the most powerful ideas in global sport to catalyse discussion, and drive the industry forward. Through a series of global summits in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, invitation-only memberships and long form content, Leaders in Sport provides professional executives, both on and off the field, with access to a community of peers to share best practice and trends that are shaping the future of sport. Their flagship event, Leaders Week London, returns from 14 to 17 October, with The Summit taking place at Twickenham Stadium hosting the most senior executives from over 40 countries, including over 100 brands. We'll be there, and you should join us. Visit leadersinsport.com/UP for more information and use UP15 for a 15% discount on your Summit passes. 

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Transcript

Madeline Orr Warming Up

[00:00:00] Unofficial Partner: Hello, it's Richard Gillis here and welcome to Unofficial Partner. The sports business podcast. Today's guest is professor Madeline or who is the leading sport ecologist and professor at university of Toronto. She's a Forbes 30 under 30 inductee founder, and co-director of the sport ecology group, who consult on international climate issues for sports organizations, such as the Commonwealth secretary yet. Well at athletics, Addie DAS, F1 teams, and the NCAA Madeline has worked closely with the BBC and ESPN. To further public understanding of climate issues in sport. Madeline's book warming up. How climate change is changing sport is an important contribution to the debate about how sport navigates the present and it's near future. 

[00:00:46] Madeline Orr: it's going to be a tough conversation for those who want to travel to the World Cup. Yes. Like that bucket list piece starts to fade. But the world is on fire and at some point something's got to give and unfortunately it's going to be like I would prefer as a citizen of the world that the thing that we're letting go of is the like super fancy, expensive, luxury experience of traveling to an international sporting event as opposed to people having access to water and food.

 This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by our friends at leaders in sport. Leaders in sport connects the most influential people in the most powerful ideas in global sport to catalyze discussion and drive the industry forward. Through a series of global summits in north America, Europe, Asia, and the middle east invitation, only memberships and long form content leaders in sport provides professional executives, both on and off the field with access to a community of peers to share best practice. And trends that are shaping the future of sport. 

Their flagship event leaders week London returns from the 14th to the 17th of October. With the summit taking place at Twickenham hosting. The most senior executives from over 40 countries, including over 100 brands. We'll be there. Of course. And you should join us. Visit leaders in sport.com Ford stroke. 

Up for more information and use up 15 for a 15% discount. On your summit passes. I was thinking about the Olympics and I was watching the Olympics and I was Looking at your work and I was wondering what you thought of the Olympics, what the Olympics looks like through your sort of professional lens, if you like, I mean, it's obviously both enjoyable, but there's other stuff going on there that I'd be interested just to tease out.

[00:02:47] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: So what did you think?

[00:02:48] Madeline Orr: I mean, I have this weird love hate relationship with the Olympics. And I think most people who work in sport kind of feel the same where it's spectacular. It's so much fun. I was in Paris, I was working with athletes. It's the atmosphere and the vibe is incredible. And at the same time, knowing what I know about how heat works, how water quality works, what the rain meant in those first two days, you know, off the top, uh, With the opening ceremonies being absolutely flooded out.

And then that impacts water quality in the sun, but it also impacts just operations generally what's going on on the backend and how kind of the business of this plays out, how many people are going to buy beer at an event versus water, beer sells better, et cetera. And so I see it from, here's the many, many ways that this is already being impacted by trends of climate change.

And at the same time, I'm also looking around seeing Lots of waste you know, lots of people moving about, which is part of the party. That's, that's part of what makes it fun, uh, and drives the business forward. But at the same time, there's, there's environmental consequences to everything we do, and so I was thinking through what the Paris organizers had said they would do on sustainability, what actually was happening on the ground, uh, and, and how people were picking that up or not.

And I think, you know, Paris organizers to their credit did just about everything organizers can do. Within a model of hosting that was designed in the 80s and 90s, and maybe we have to rethink that model a little bit if we're going to kind of crack. You know, they got all the low hanging fruit, every single thing, right?

They worked on food, they worked on merch, they worked on signage ground transport, all these things. There's a bigger level to hack here around how do we manage all of these international fans? How do we sort through, you know, these unavoidable emissions? And that's going to be where model change is actually necessary, which is a hard conversation to have.

You know, sports designed around international competition with international fans. And if we're saying we have to rethink that. It's gonna

[00:04:48] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: be having that conversation? I always look at, yeah. the individual cities and Paris, as you say, there is the publicity stuff and I, you know, I'm not qualified really to, it's, it's purposely constructed for me to not be able to penetrate whether there's, you know, where the truth is and where it isn't.

So I, you know, I understand that and that, that's a part of the problem in that I become more cynical about it. I, you know, you get into that 

[00:05:12] Madeline Orr: Sure, yeah, 

[00:05:12] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: but that's just put that to the one side for a minute. But I was looking at Paris and thinking, okay. have a selfish agenda. Every city has a selfish agenda.

It's got to get its best effort out there. So I'm assuming it's an IOC level. They're the only ones with a longer term viewpoint. Where should the conversation be had?

[00:05:34] Madeline Orr: You know, I think it's a combination of the two, of host city and IOC. The IOC in 1994 at their Congress in Paris made the environment the third pillar of the Olympic movement. Right? So there's some nice parallels here. 30 years later, back in the same city, here's the big event and the environment's being put front and center.

And every Olympics is going to have the big, some big conversation, whether they want to or not, you know, like, Brazil had a big conversation about Zika virus. Tokyo had a big conversation about health and well being because of COVID and here we are in Paris and it's the environment. So I, there's always going to be the big issue.

Paris made it the environment. Great. As far as I'm concerned. Yes, there's a lot of sheen around that and posturing but in the long term, you know, the IOC, once they set hosting standards, which they have, and they are much better in the last 10 years than they have been previously around environmental expectations. You know, things like we don't want a bunch of big white elephants anymore. You got to use facilities we've already got. And that automatically rules out lots of places around the world who just can't host because sorry, you don't have a velodrome and a pool and a stadium. So it doesn't work. But beyond the hosting standards that they put forth and say, you have to be able to bid with these things, they don't have a lot of pull once they've awarded the rights to a city, right?

So if they award the rights to LA and LA says all these lovely things in the bid and then doesn't do it, there's not a whole lot of kickback there that's gonna happen because the IOC is kind of locked into this. And the IOC, for reputation's sake, certainly can't turn around and be seen to be, you know, slagging LA. So, it's a tricky one. I think cities, knowing how many cities have pulled bids because the economic model just doesn't work anymore for hosting these things, it, they routinely go over budget to the tune of 175 percent on average, according to a study. famous study out of Oxford a few years ago. It was just replicated and Paris also fits that bill.

The only one that hasn't gone way over is LA in 84. It's held up as a financial model of success. And it's because they really pioneered private funding in that model. And, and because they did, and it was the first one that did, they were able to make it work. But now that that's kind of the standard, it's a little trickier.

And since LA in 84, this thing has gotten a lot bigger. Huge, like way bigger than the event was in 84. So a lot has changed. It's only gotten bigger. It's harder to make big sustainable. And, and so it's going to be the cities that have to have that conversation and say, okay, great, we're going to use existing facilities, but when we do, the facilities we have are not quite as big as the kind of Olympic standard that folks might expect. And that means that we're going to have slightly fewer fans in the stands. It's still going to be a packed house. It's still going to be fun. It's just not going to be 60, 000 people. It might be 40 or 20 and, and we're going to change the model to be more about serving our citizens and our people here, as opposed to this tourism spectacle model, which is what's driving the growth. I think there's ways to do it. I think there's some lessons we learned during COVID, actually, during Tokyo and Beijing around how to broadcast this, how to keep it fun for people far away, that can be translated in meaningful ways to keep that tourism spectacle down, because, you know, when LA hosted in 84, we didn't have round the clock, You know, newscast and broadcast of every single event.

You couldn't go online and pick and choose what you're watching at any given moment. You can do that now. So there's less of a need to go in person. And the people who do go in person are obviously people who can afford to, and that's, you know, a certain segment of society anyway. So if you're actually trying to serve the world, I think it could be a slightly smaller scale event on the ground and still a media spectacle.

[00:09:20] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: It's interesting that the tourism thing that, you know, that, that bit of it. We were talking the other day about, you know, we did a podcast about who the winners were commercially

[00:09:31] Madeline Orr: Mm hmm.

[00:09:32] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: around Paris and, people were talking about NBC and Snoop and they were talking about, , various sponsors that did clever, clever things on digital and what, all of that.

But then at the end of the conversation, essentially the winner was Paris because Paris was just so sent, you know, it was just this incredible two weeks, stunning thing. And that. If you are in, you know, working back into the sort of food chain of how these things, events get done, the big argument is that we're going to sell Paris, we're going to sell the city, we're going to, you know, this is and you're bringing all of those constituent parts of the city and the country together behind this idea.

What you're saying is that actually we're going to need to hold off on that. We're going to, that's going to, that part is where your conversation, I can have this conversation and say, yeah, okay, brilliant. And then I'm going back. I wonder what the commercial implications of this are going to be or the broader sort of the 

[00:10:26] Madeline Orr: I mean, I think, were you in Paris?

[00:10:29] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: No. So

[00:10:32] Madeline Orr: it worked, right? Like you were sold on Paris without having gone to Paris. I think we can sell people on a place without them having to be there during the games. The difference is, The games attract such a concentration of people during such a short period of time that you build up all this infrastructure for that critical mass that doesn't need to be there. Like if we sell people on Paris without having 15 million fans in the city, uh, and, and let's say it's eight. Right? Like that's, we've just cut fan emissions by half. Ta da! And we've, we've also reduced the strain on public transit, waste management, all these other things during those two weeks. But that doesn't mean that those other 8 million that didn't come to Paris this time are not coming in the future.

They're going to watch from home and they're going to be sold on it just like you were. And they'll come at another time. And that dispersion, Is going to mean that all of a sudden we actually can accommodate all these people coming at different times and that will be great for the city. So I don't think, you know, that losing those fans during the actual event itself necessarily means a cut to tourism.

And actually, if you look at the stats around Air France and what they were selling, and they were complaining that they're frustrated because their long term sales are going down because people are coming in for the games, flying on their own national airlines in. And then not coming to Air France the rest of the year, and I'm thinking, okay, let's spread that out so that we can use the resources we have so that we're not building unnecessarily, et cetera, et cetera. 

[00:11:55] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: You've got these, the global agenda of the governing bodies. So you see, and we're picking on the Olympics, because we've just had the Olympics and the IOC, but you've got, so FIFA World Cup, rugby, cricket,

[00:12:08] Madeline Orr: Yep.

[00:12:08] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: all the American sports, they are all, Seeking to grow beyond their own, what you might call sort of national or natural marketplaces.

They're looking for the global fan. Now, and you're right, a lot of it is a media conversation. A lot of it is a marketing conversation, but it is also a real event conversation. And they're saying, right, okay, well, we need to take the event to the U. S. So in the States, we're going to 48 teams, in the world cup.

These two, whilst also talking about climate change. So that's the classic dilemma of, okay, it's in the mission statement, we will make great speeches about it, but we will still grow, and we will still expand, and we'll be more, more journeys, more problems, more fans. Did, those are just, I can't see how you would reconcile those two objectives of global growth, but these commitments that they're making.

[00:13:04] Madeline Orr: I mean, welcome to the whole discussion around green growth versus degrowth, right? I think, uh, you know, this is a conversation that's not unique to sport. Every industry is having this conversation, and it's tricky because there are short term ways to hack that. So, for example, if we talk about the World Cup coming to North America, it's coming to my city.

I'm in Toronto. We're going to have six matches here. If they were to say, that the teams will travel. I'm actually never really worried about the athlete travel. That's just kind of not the point to me because that's part of the production cost of the thing. If we're talking about fans and you were to tell me that the tickets that get sold for BMO Stadium here in Toronto are going to be reserved 70 percent for people who live within a postcode that's a couple hours drive of Toronto, I'd say great. I think we got there. The problem isn't the traveling teams. It's really not. It's all the traveling fans. And so if you think about ways to build these events for the residents of a city, and I'm not saying that, you know, we're not like some like Messi's partner and parents can't be there. Of course, like, yes, athletes, like your people can be in the stands.

We're not trying to rob you of that. We're just saying that it can't be that the majority of the stands are filled with people who have flown in to be here. You know, they've chosen cities that are big enough that have a big enough fan base of sport that we can sell these tickets locally and it will be awesome.

And then the people of the city actually feel some ownership of these things and will buy in and it becomes even a better sales point for the city. And so, So I think that that would be the way short term to reconcile these two things is to say, okay, we're going to, we're going to grow the scope of the event in terms of geography, but in terms of where fans are moving and how we're managing that, we're going to restrict or quota the tickets, uh, to make sure that at least the majority of people are actually staying where they live and then you can watch the other things on TV, but, you know, you're not flying from Toronto to New York to L.

A. for example, in the course of those few weeks That requires a lot of consideration. It requires making sure that most of the same teams are playing in the same place. It also means that if you're from some foreign nation, you've come to follow your team. I would hope that they're playing in, like, they've already said they're going to play them in the same regions, right?

But A region on the West Coast is a six hour flight from one spot to the other. So like, let's, that's a, a very big region, uh, with a lot of travel. That's how I would reconcile a short term. Long term, I think we need to be looking at smaller places to host smaller venues and just a smaller scale.

And, and it means that it's going to be a tough conversation for those who want to travel to the World Cup. Yes. Like that bucket list piece starts to fade. But the world is on fire and at some point something's got to give and unfortunately it's going to be like I would prefer as a citizen of the world that the thing that we're letting go of is the like super fancy, expensive, luxury experience of traveling to an international sporting event as opposed to people having access to water and food.

So I think that, you know, we have to be having these conversations in the context of climate change and recognizing that actually, Yeah, there's gonna be some sacrifices. This is not one of the sacrifices that I'm worried

about. Like, this might just be what has to happen. 

[00:16:23] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: It's interesting. You made the comparison, there's a question about the comparison, I suppose, between sport and other industry sectors and whether or not sport is leading or lagging and it's a difficult one, but do you get any sense?

Because every, always the argument with sport and sports marketing generally is, Oh, it could be a leader in this, that and the other. I always wonder whether it is, but what do you think? Is it, is it possible to answer that question?

[00:16:50] Madeline Orr: Yeah, I don't, it's a mixed bag, right? Like, sport, it means a lot of things.

And so if we're talking about, you know, You know, marketing and sport media like coverage and sport, how we broadcast these things, the event production around it. Absolutely. It's leading if we're talking about the operational sustainability aspects now, we're far behind other industries.

If we're talking about how we're handling this discussion around growth, degrowth, you know, uh, What do we do about this? How do we reconcile these, these challenging? I mean, for years and years and years, the two dominant paradigms have been make money. So profit and like perform on the field. Right? So performance and profit have been the dominant paradigms. We're now starting to say, and this isn't new, like 30 years ago, the IOC started saying this. 15 years ago, FIFA started saying this, that Planet is a third one. But we're not actually treating it that way yet. So what, how does that look? I think we're pretty on par with other industries in that respect because no one's quite cracked it, frankly. And this is where the interconnectedness of these sectors becomes so important. So we've talked a lot about tourism around Paris, but like sport necessarily is very much intertwined with venue management, with tourism, with events, with marketing, with broadcast, with all these other things internet and data and, and, you know, all these things.

So I don't think that you can pick it sport and say it's way ahead or way behind on planet compared to others. I think it's kind of right in the middle of the pack. It's not super lagging behind, but it's not making any great strides either.

[00:18:29] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Do you think that the shift, you must get tired of being seen as the, the co, there's a cost. Always the conversation, always the conversation is we're having a party and then, you know,

[00:18:43] Madeline Orr: And I'm the party 

[00:18:44] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: and then Madeleine comes in the room and, but that's, that has to change in some way for the, all these incentives to shift, doesn't it?

It has to, there has to be framed differently in this conversation.

[00:18:57] Madeline Orr: totally, totally, And I think that one of the things that keeps me driving on this is I kind of view it as I'm playing the long game. Most people are thinking about the next year or five years worth of profits and returns because they have obligations to their stakeholders and, you know, shareholders and team owners and whatever else. I don't have that obligation. My obligation is to like the next generation. Like I'm literally about to be a mom. Like this next generation thing is serious for me right now. I'm playing the long game. I'm here to make sure that this exists into the future in some way, shape or form, that people have access to sport, that it continues to be fun, that we continue to benefit from the health benefits and the social benefits and all these things that we know it can do, it can boost economies, it can do all these great things. If we continue to sap it for everything it's worth for a few bucks right now, and we don't play this long game a little bit, We're going to lose it in some cases. It's going to just get cut, right? We are facing down a reality where as soon as Brisbane 2032, we could have 20 percent less Olympic nations competing because climate change is destroying their federal budgets and they're not going to field a national team, let alone have grounds that are safe to play on or temperatures that are feasible.

So. If you want to continue to have international and competitive sport, we have to have this conversation, not a case of whether, it's just a case of whether you're willing to do it now or whether you're going to let it be dictated by disaster in 10 years.

[00:20:20] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And where are the bits of what's the, pointy bit of that evolution? Which are the sports that you most, you think about the most in this?

[00:20:31] Madeline Orr: As being at

[00:20:31] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah.

[00:20:32] Madeline Orr: Cricket.

I mean, if you look at where cricket is played, it's played in very hot places, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, down into Australia, having huge issues there. I certainly think about football, you know, we call it the world sport, but it can only be the world sport if the world is playing.

And if the world's not only built to play, that's a problem. , I think about all winter sport. Like I am Canadian. I love my winter sports. I don't think They've got a shot in hell unless we make some serious changes very, very, very soon to how we conceptualize them, when they happen, where they happen, what we're willing to invest into them. And then I think about every sport that's kind of distanced endurance. So you're cycling, your marathon, et cetera. Anything that would have you exposed to the elements for long durations of time, because as our environments change, we know the body can only take so much. And it's not a case of being fit enough to handle the heat.

It has nothing to do with fitness. It's, it's literally like, are your blood cells producing enough carrier cells to bring oxygen to your skin, to relieve heat in those conditions. And some people can, some can't, you're not going to know until you're in the middle of a heat stroke. So let's not find out.

[00:21:41] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: So a very broad spread. I mean, it's every sport, 

[00:21:44] Madeline Orr: Yeah. 

[00:21:45] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I want to just shift the, there's a question about sponsorship because I think there's a lot of people listening to this podcast who work in and around either on, you know, on the buy side or sell side or in agencies. And it seems to me , there's a few things there.

One is the obvious bit for example, oil sponsorship.

[00:22:02] Madeline Orr: Sure.

[00:22:03] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And we had cycling, British Cycling and Shell. We had, you know, over here, that was a, that was a big storm. 

[00:22:08] Madeline Orr: Yes. 

[00:22:09] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: just the alignment question, whether it, it matters

[00:22:14] Madeline Orr: Mm hmm.

[00:22:15] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: fundamentally or it's an easy hit.

Let's start there. What do you think about that?

[00:22:20] Madeline Orr: so I wrote in my book, if anyone's read my book, you'll know that I think that we need to be phasing away from oil and sport. Now, I don't think that's a discussion about let's cut all ties to oil tomorrow. I realize that's not feasible in a lot of cases. These are long term contracts. They're supporting in different ways.

Totally fine. Mm hmm. But 10 years from now, if you're an organization that said you're going to be on a path to net zero, then per the U. N. 's definitions, you can't be taking money from fossil fuels, period. So, you can't claim carbon neutrality, you can't claim you're on a path to zero, like, none of that applies, like, 10 years from now, not even 2030, they can't be there. So, this, that's part of it, is some of this is being dictated by higher systems. The other part of it is, I think, This social license of certain industries that are seen to be not playing ball on climate adaptation is getting more visible and we're seeing it coming out of the art space, right? We know that there's been massive protests around the British museum and the science museum and all of these big institutions that have had to drop oil because their boards are saying no, because the people are saying no.

And I think, you know, sport, if it continues to buddy up with. Partners that are seen to be or viewed by the public as not credible on climate change. We're going to continue to get these Extinction Rebellion protests. We're going to continue to get, you know, people throwing orange, uh, smoke on a snooker table at World Championships.

That's going to continue to happen because there's a growing perception and there's a growing, I think, understanding in the public that this is real and it's urgent and it's now and We can't be partnering with anybody who's not on board with at least a shift. And again, it's not a turn the switch off tomorrow. That's no one saying that. Just a shift towards getting rid of oil. I also think that in many cases it's going to be dictated by governments, which is what we saw with tobacco. So, you know, in the 80s, the conversation was, well, tobacco, not super healthy. We now know this, what's the plan? And it took 15 years for them to kind of get moved out of the picture.

Largely moved out of the picture. There's a few kind of tagalongs that are still there, but for the most part, gone. And that wasn't the sport industry saying, we're going to get rid of this. That was government saying you can't advertise this anymore. And we're starting to see that pop up, right? The European union has legislation on the table that might see that happen as soon as 2027. France already has bans on fossil fuel sponsorship. The city of Amsterdam, if you go to Amsterdam, you're not going to see a single fossil fuel or high carbon sponsor anywhere, anywhere in the city. You can't advertise an airline on a bus stop in that city. So I think we're starting to get some of that pushback from kind of powers beyond sport that are going to kind of tell the tale of this.

So if I'm sitting in a sponsorship office, I'm thinking about if you currently have fossil fuel money on your roster of sponsors, I'm thinking very hard about how long that contract is, whether there's an exit clause early, or whether you just run it out. And don't renew it and start thinking right now about what the options are to replace that money because it might be the case that come two, three years from now, your government won't let you renew that money. And just be ready for that. The other part of it is. If you have that money coming in, you could get dinged on all the new greenwashing legislation that's coming out, which is functionally, it looks like a false advertising claim. But that's now a thing in the UK, in the US, in Europe, like you can get dragged in front of a court and sued. Or find for functionally greenwashing false advertising. If you're taking fossil fuel money, like that would be enough. So it's not worth it. Like you're going to take that money in, but you're risking losing it elsewhere. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't risk it.

[00:26:09] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: What about the other levers of Again, one of the stories that you hear is that the ESG investment sort of regime, I don't know or movement is ultimately going to be a sort of arbiter of this. It's going to shape behavior and

there's going to be a fear of, amongst the government, you know, if I'm the, if IOC, or if I'm someone taking fossil fuel money, that there is going to be impacted.

I'm never completely sure of the validity of that argument, but what do you, what's your view?

[00:26:43] Madeline Orr: I mean the whole ESG framework is somewhere between voluntary action and industry management. Right. And, and it has shifted quite a lot over the years. Some frameworks have gotten much stronger at actually weeding out what's legitimate and what's not. Still, it feels like every month the Guardian or the Times is coming out with some new, this ESG scheme is nonsense for this, that, and the other reason. So it feels like a bit of a gamble. If I'm sitting in a sponsorship office, it feels like a little bit of a gamble to just use that. I do think it's a very useful tool as a starting point. You know, it can help guide decision making now with a view of this might change. I think we just have to start accepting that the rules on this are shifting every day and they're not shifting in the direction of more acceptance for fossil fuels.

So keep that in mind.

[00:27:33] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: What do you think the relationship with this conversation with general public opinion, which again is an impossible question, but sometimes when I see like, for example, again, it was a, it's a British thing, but the, you know, the Just Up Oil protests and they got heavy prison sentences.

And I found the response to that really quite revealing in terms of people's, thinking, well, that either they're they were hugely overly punished or there were quite a lot of people saying, no, give it to them. And they really do hate on the protesters, which is part of it creatively.

But I don't know, I'm trying to find a gauge of where the general public is. I'm always outta step with the general public, by the way. I'm not, you know, so I'm 

[00:28:12] Madeline Orr: So am I. 

[00:28:13] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: I'm, hopeless at trying to second guess what public opinion is, but it seems like I, I, there is a misstep there.

[00:28:23] Madeline Orr: there is a bit of a misstep there. I would also say that within the sport fandom, what we know from research on fans and their perceptions of environmental communications and messaging and sponsorships, etc. Is that a fan's not going to change their stripes. It's just because of one good or bad campaign in either direction or bad step, whether it's, you know, re signing a player who's had all kinds of legal problems or picking up a sponsor that you don't agree with. It's not going to change your fan base and fundamentally that's where your money is going to come from. And so it's also not going to push away your broadcast dollars. So from a business standpoint, it's not going to matter enough. But I think what we know from the general public's perceptions and opinions on climate change and environmental action, et cetera, et cetera, is that generally consumers are looking for more environmental action. Generally, they're on board with and expecting the brands that they support to be seen to be doing something on this anyway. And, but it's not to the point where they'll stop following that team if they're not doing Green Football Weekend. So we're not quite at that inflection point yet, but we're moving in a direction where it will become very important soon.

It's not quite there.

[00:29:38] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And do, do you think athletes have a, big impact? That's, again, a, a thread of this and you quite often see people making individual statements.

[00:29:48] Madeline Orr: Yeah.

[00:29:48] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: they more influential, do you think, than, I mean, they seem to have a disproportionate amount of power?

[00:29:55] Madeline Orr: They do. They don't always use it,

[00:29:57] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: No. Well, they don't use it for good, but

[00:29:59] Madeline Orr: well, yeah, I mean, athletes are possibly the, they are the most visible, powerful employee group in the world. But they. The boss is the owner and the manager of the team and whatnot. So if, if you're a player who is. Very good. If you're a starter, if you're the person who's the star of the team, you've got a lot more leeway than if you're an athlete who might be coming off the bench for the last minutes of the game, uh, because then you might be pretty easily disposable and replaceable, and that sucks that we have to think about it that way.

But that's the truth. We know that athletes, when they do speak up on this, they're viewed as more credible than the organizations themselves. So if you've got a Rockstar footballer on your team who's willing to talk about this. That's a more powerful mechanism for delivering any kind of messaging on climate change than if the team is said to be doing it. And I think it's an untapped resource as of now because for many athletes, I just actually wrote a paper about this. For many athletes that I've worked with, it's seen to be too sciencey, too complicated, too kind of over there to get involved with, unlike other social justice issues where there might be

an identity link between the athlete and the issue.

So if you're a black athlete, for example, it might be easier to speak about racism. If you're a woman athlete, it might be easier to speak about gender inequity. If you're an athlete experiencing climate change, in theory, it should be easy to say, it's really, really hot outside and this is climate change and that's a problem. But that's quite a few mental steps to take, and you have to be explaining that to the audience while you're advocating for climate change. Whereas in other cases, the identity link is a much clearer and easier piece for the audience to pick up on, and therefore the credibility is more obvious.

[00:31:43] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: hypocrisy is the fear, isn't it, 

[00:31:44] Madeline Orr: yeah, we call it,

we call it the hypocrisy trap. and here's the thing. nobody clears the hypocrisy trap. Like, this is not a purity test. Greta Thunberg is also not perfect. You know, like, I work in this space. I know it really well. I'm not perfect. I just flew to Paris. It, that's okay. No one's going to clear that purity test.

So we have to get beyond the idea that you're going to be perfect in order to speak about this. Because if that's the case, then like there goes every single person in society out of the conversation. That doesn't work for me, but I think we do have to be finding ways to empower athletes to have that conversation and to hit back with that response because they are going to get it.

Like the trolls on Twitter are going to show up as soon as you say anything on climate change and they're going to push back and say, well, you fly around the world and, you know, live a high lifestyle. And yeah, that's probably true, but also what are you doing about it? Joe Schmo on Twitter. So

[00:32:39] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah. it's interesting that you may mention there about there's the hypocrisy thing. There's also the worry about having to explain a position which can get complicated very quickly and it's different.

Context slightly, which is the golfers who then went to LiveGolf who, you know, had to answer questions about Saudi human rights. They were very quickly, they were very uncomfortable and they were seen as being very naive and it sort of exposed them. in a way that they wouldn't normally.

It was sort of out, it was so outside of their normal day to day that you could see that they were really uncomfortable. And I could see the same sort of, an athlete into some tricky territory. 

If you advising them, you tell them not to go there. 

[00:33:24] Madeline Orr: Absolutely. And I also think that, you know, you're like making a comparison to Live Golf and Saudi Human Rights. Like, again, if we think about athletes as very visible, very powerful, very influential employees of organizations, right? Like you don't go to Starbucks and ask the person working at the counter, you know, Why do you get your coffee from this country?

And why are they treated so poorly there? And what's going on with the Seattle headquarters nonsense? Like, no, you would never. So some of these questions are kind of unfair. The other part of it is we need to be supporting athletes to be ready to have that conversation and management like team managers, athlete representatives need to be preparing them for this.

It can't just be that the PR prep is about what happened in the last match. They need to be given some more tools to talk about this. And I've worked with a few professional teams on that, and it doesn't take much. It's a half hour of, Hey, here's a quick brief on this thing. You're going to get asked about it at some point. Here's some polite ways either to shut it down if you're not comfortable or some ways to address it in a way that, You know, in different ways, depending on what makes you comfortable at this time, and generally when athletes have that, they are more willing to actually say something, because they do have opinions.

They are people in the world, just like the rest of us, and they do care actually. Overwhelmingly, they really care about where they're playing and the people they're playing for and who the fans are. They do. But if you've been in a football academy system since you were 13 years old, and this is what you know, then it's not fair to ask you all of a sudden to be an expert on human rights issues in a foreign

[00:35:01] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah.

Yeah.

yeah.

I mean, I mean, it's interesting. I sort of mentioned human rights because actually, you know, the Saudi question facing sport and not just Saudi, but, but, you know, we just had a World Cup in Qatar. These are vast oil producing

[00:35:18] Madeline Orr: Yes.

[00:35:18] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: countries and, and 

Gulf states. And they are, it looks like if you look at, you know, looking at the next 10, 15, 20 years in sport, where's the money going to come from?

A lot of it is going to come from that region. So, you know,

Again, these arguments versus that, and I can, I'm trying to sort of work out what a question is, but you'd have heard it before, but there's a, you know, how does this, how does that work out? Hey,

[00:35:44] Madeline Orr: take on this one, which is that if you want to have a conversation about human rights in places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, I'm very happy to have that conversation. If you want to have a conversation about oil, money and sports. Then I'm not really willing to start in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, even though, yes, that's where their money is coming from, because this model of funding was actually pioneered right here in North America, and we've been doing it for decades, and if we're going to point a finger at Saudi Arabia and say, okay, but all your money comes from oil, then you better turn around and do the exact same thing right away to the NFL, the NBA, the MLB, all these big, like, half of the Prem League is owned by money that has some ties to oil, a bunch of soccer, or sorry, a bunch of cycling, So that feels unfair to me that we're going to pick and choose where we put the finger on the oil money question because it is so vast and so everywhere that that to me, just think, I just hear that and think, are you picking on them because you don't like that they're from a certain part of the world that you don't understand? Or are you picking on them because of oil money? And if it's oil money, then let's actually clear the board and actually have that conversation. If you want to have a conversation about human rights, though. Fine. That one I'll have because there are some, it's, it's two different things.

[00:36:56] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: can you just, just pause on that? I don't quite get the difference so the oil companies are fair game. But the

states are not.

[00:37:07] Madeline Orr: I'm saying that these states get their money from oil. Functionally, their source of funding is oil. I'm not totally sure why that merits more criticism than for example, the U. S. where Most of their economy also is derived from oil in one way, shape or form, and most sport funding in particular also comes from oil, indirectly or directly. So I'm saying, if you want to have a conversation about oil money, if the point of it is to point at Saudi and say, you're funding this via oil and that's wrong, or that's not ethical, or that's, you know, a green crime, then okay. But we gotta be even about it and point at Jim Radcliffe and INEOS, we need to point at, you know, the money coming out of the U.

S. South, etc. If you're having a conversation and saying, I don't like Saudi money in my sport in the UK, for example, because of the human rights. Stuff going on there. I find that that's a very reasonable criticism. And yes, let's have a conversation about human rights. And where, you know, where are their human rights violations going on and where's the money coming from linked to human rights.

But if it's linked to oil, if oil is your catch point, I think it's not fair to single out Saudi and the Gulf states compared to the rest of the world.

[00:38:22] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: So you're saying that we should look at America and Venezuela as well,

[00:38:27] Madeline Orr: And, and Russia and France

and yeah. 

[00:38:31] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: and the North Sea 

[00:38:32] Madeline Orr: Yeah. and And Norway and Sweden and I'm like, yes, like their sport has been funded by oil for a hundred years. That's not new. It's just that these new players are new. So if the problem is oil, money, and sport, then let's have a big conversation about oil, money, and sport, but let's at least be fair about it and not just point at a few brown countries.

That feels not fair.

[00:38:55] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Okay. Yeah.

[00:38:56] Madeline Orr: Yeah.

[00:38:57] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Listen, I'm fascinating and I'm going to point people towards your book, Warming Up, which I really enjoyed. Congratulations on it. Did you enjoy writing it?

[00:39:05] Madeline Orr: Yes and no. I, yeah, I mean, climate change is hard, right? It's hard to say, here's all the bad stuff happening in sports and then like try to be optimistic about it. So yes and no. I enjoyed all the people I got to meet and the conversations I got to have and just the unpacking of how complicated this all is.

I really enjoyed that. But having to tell stories about kids dying of heat on football fields or, you know, communities being devastated by wildfire. No, that part wasn't fun.

[00:39:37] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And I can imagine. And also, there is hope at the end. You have got, there is, there are mitigations and things. So let's let, let's end on a hopeful note. You appear to be a hopeful person. So this isn't doom or 

[00:39:50] Madeline Orr: to be. Yes.

[00:39:53] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: What's, give us a couple of things that we should take away and say, okay, no, we're, we're heading in the right direction, or this is where we should be heading.

[00:40:01] Madeline Orr: Yeah, I think one of the things I realized as I wrote the book is that, Sport has a unique narrative capacity when it comes to climate change that other sectors don't necessarily have, which is that we can tell a winner's story. There's a character arc here for the sports world where we win at the end. And I, we never hear that when I think about the future and I hear in the news, Oh, the future is going to have X, Y, Z. The answer is always more terror, more conflict, more crisis, more climate change, more of all these bad things. What I don't often hear is it's going to have more creativity, more community, more well being, you know, more sleep, whatever it is. We don't hear that version, even though that is what we're driving towards. It should be. And we know from sports psychologists that people aren't motivated by, here's what you're running away from. That will drive you for like a few minutes in fight or flight. When you ask, when you tell someone, here's what you're running towards, which is what we do in sport all the time, line up at the start line to run towards the finish.

You don't run away from the start. So, like, if we paint a finish line for people, which we can do with sport narratives, we're going to, you know, when we get this right, when we act on climate change and get this right, we're going to have more, More people participating in sport. It's going to be more gender equal.

We're going to have more opportunities. We're going to have cleaner air. It's possible that we see every single record, every sport smashed because God knows our food could be better. You know, our health could be better. Our sleep could be better. Our communities can be like all these things. That's the version of the future that I want.

[00:41:35] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. The other bit is that we have to make, we have to start making better films about this as well. I watched, I only watched this because, I mentioned this because I watched Under Paris last night. I don't know if you've seen it. It's one of the worst films I've ever seen. So sharks are under Paris.

And it obviously had, there was, I watched it because my daughter wanted to watch it, but it was all over TikTok with the comparison. It's all, it's about a Paris triathlon being disrupted by a massive killer shark that, and it's, there's a huge eco environmental message to it. And it's, it's absolute nonsense.

I'm trying to think of really a, a great environmental film. What's your favorite film?

[00:42:17] Madeline Orr: What's my favorite film? Oh, jeez. Uh,

I honestly, I haven't seen a great environmental film in a long time.

[00:42:25] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: it's really 

[00:42:26] Madeline Orr: I'd like nothing comes. It's really hard. But then I think. Like it would be the kind of classic sports film where we discover that because they shut down the plant next to this high school that has a football team that's been struggling for 30 years, all of a sudden this new crop of young men or young women is breathing much cleaner air and the soil is much better and they're performing at a higher level and over a 10 year period they go on to win 10 national championships.

Like that to me would be like the awesome sports eco story.

[00:42:58] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: That would be a sort of box set rather than a film, wouldn't it? It would, it would, 

[00:43:01] Madeline Orr: Yeah, it's like a whole series that we're

describing. Yeah. 

[00:43:04] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: And there will be whole episodes about the sort of, you know, it gets into the detail of cleaning out the, uh, the factory, which, uh, 

[00:43:11] Madeline Orr: Yeah. Netflix. Are you

listening? 

[00:43:13] Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner: exactly. Unofficial Partner production. Well, listen, Madeline, congratulations.

You got, you're just off maternity leave. Thank you very much for your, for your time and good luck with the book.

[00:43:24] Madeline Orr: Thank you so much.