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sportswashing
Saudi Aramco Leads Fossil Fuel Firms in 'Sportswashing' Sponsorships: Analysis
"Oil companies who are delaying climate action and pouring more fuel on the fire of global heating are using Big Tobacco's old playbook and trying to pass themselves off as patrons of sport."
Sep 18, 2024
Aramco, the state-owned Saudi firm, has the most sports sponsorships of any fossil fuel company in the world, with $1.3 billion in active deals, followed by Ineos, TotalEnergies, and Shell, according to a Wednesday report that compares the industry's methods to those once used by Big Tobacco.
The 23-page report, Dirty Money: How Fossil Fuel Sponsors Are Polluting Sport, details one of the ways in which countries and corporations "sportswash" their reputations: sponsorships of popular athletes, teams, events, or leagues. Other means of sportswashing, such as Saudi Arabia's development of a new golf tour and purchase of major soccer clubs, aren't included in the analysis, which was produced by the New Weather Institute (NWI), a climate think tank.
Aramco, which is about 98% owned by the Saudi Arabian government, is the most profitable company in the world and is responsible for over 4% of global carbon emissions since 1965, the most of any firm. It pays out more than $300 million per year in sports sponsorships in motorsports, soccer, golf, and cricket, with active deals worth about $1.3 billion over their lifespans, the report says.
Overall, the report authors found 205 sponsorship deals by the fossil fuel industry worth a total of $5.6 billion.
"Oil companies who are delaying climate action and pouring more fuel on the fire of global heating are using Big Tobacco's old playbook and trying to pass themselves off as patrons of sport," Andrew Simms, NWI's co-director, said in a statement.
The report emphasizes the negative impact fossil fuel companies have not just on the climate but also, more immediately, on public health—and the ability to play sports—citing research that shows the burning of their products leads to millions of excess deaths per year.
"Air pollution from fossil fuels and the extreme weather of a warming world threaten the very future of athletes, fans, and events ranging from the Winter Olympics to World Cups," Simms said. "If sport is to have a future it needs to clean itself of dirty money from big polluters and stop promoting its own destruction."
The dirty money polluting sport - our new report on how oil and gas companies are exploiting sport even as they destroy the climate conditions for it 👇👇👇 https://t.co/d4AItJnglv
— Andrew Simms (@AndrewSimms_uk) September 18, 2024
The term sportswashing, related to whitewashing and greenwashing, has gained use in the last decade as a way of describing efforts to distract attention from wrongdoing through affiliation with popular sports. Critics often levy the charge at Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which draws financing from Aramco, has reportedly spent more than $2 billion on its LIV Golf tour in the last three years. Saudi Arabia is expected host the World Cup in 2034, and neighboring Qatar did so in 2022, spending over $200 billion.
Saudi Arabia and Aramco have long been accused of greenwashing. Yet poor environmental credentials aren't their only public relations issue. The country, in addition to sourcing its wealth from planet-destroying fossil fuels, is led by an authoritarian regime that has a terrible human rights record, one under more scrutiny since the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who worked for The Washington Post.
In response to the sportswashing critique, Saudi leaders have been blunt and defiant.
"If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1%, then we'll continue sportswashing," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto leader, toldFox News last year.
In addition to Aramco, the NWI report focuses on three Western fossil fuel companies. Shell and Ineos, two U.K.-based multinationals, each spend more than $100 million per year on sponsorships in a wide variety of sports. TotalEnergies, a French multinational, spends more than $60 million.
The NWI report recommends that sports organizations institute tobacco-style bans on fossil fuel sponsorships and improve due diligence on donors and sponsors.
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The Cleveland Guardians Are Wearing the Wrong Logo On Their Sleeves
Guardians, by definition, protect and preserve. The company that paid for their shoulder patches, Marathon Petroleum, does the exact opposite, posing a major threat to public health and the environment.
Aug 10, 2024
A few weeks ago, I drove to Baltimore to see my favorite boyhood baseball team for the first time since it changed its name to the Guardians, and I noticed something jarring about their uniforms. No, I’m not talking about see-through pants. I’m talking about the patch on their sleeves bearing the logo of a company whose business is antithetical to the meaning of the team’s new moniker.
Guardians, by definition, protect and preserve. The company that paid for that patch, Marathon Petroleum, does the exact opposite, posing a major threat to public health and the environment. The country’s largest oil refiner with more than 7,000 Marathon and Arco gas stations nationwide, it ranks among the country’s top 50 air and water polluters as well as the top 20 carbon polluters, according to a 2023 report by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). Since 2014, the Findlay, Ohio-based company and its subsidiaries have been fined more than $900 million for federal environmental violations. Guardians they are not.
The fact that the Guardians now wear Marathon’s logo may not be news to Clevelanders, but it was to me. My current hometown team, the Washington Nationals, has not rushed to cash in on the sleeve logo craze that began last year after a 2022 labor contract allowed teams to add advertising patches to their uniforms, so I hadn’t been paying attention. Besides the Nike swoosh that has adorned the front of all MLB team jerseys since 2020, 17 MLB teams are now wearing jersey patches from corporations ranging from grocery chains and electronics firms to insurance businesses and energy companies.
Marathon Petroleum partnered with the Guardians because it wants baseball fans to think it’s a good corporate citizen. It is most definitely not.
To be sure, the Guardians are not the only team that has inked an oil patch deal. The Houston Astros (Oxy Energy), Kansas City Royals (QuikTrip), and Texas Rangers (Energy Transfer) also now display oil industry logos on their sleeves. Unlike Marathon Petroleum, however, only Oxy Energy—formerly Occidental Petroleum—and Energy Transfer are among the PERI’s top 50 air, water, and carbon polluters, and only in one category each. Based on 2021 data, Oxy Energy was the 35th biggest air polluter and Energy Transfer was the 34th biggest carbon polluter.
Marathon Petroleum, meanwhile, ranks as the nation’s 48th biggest toxic air pollution emitter, worse than Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company; the 25th biggest water polluter, worse than Chevron and Phillips 66; and the 18th biggest carbon polluter, worse than BP, Chevron, and Koch Industries. Despite its pitiful performance, the company maintains on its website that it is “committed to minimizing [its] environmental impact.”
Beyond its abysmal environmental record, Marathon Petroleum has played a key role in efforts to undermine federal climate-related regulations. In 2018, the company spearheaded a covert campaign to roll back U.S. fuel economy standards, disingenuously arguing that the country produces so much oil that it no longer has to worry about conserving it. If the campaign had been successful, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would have increased by as much as 931 million metric tons by 2035, more than the annual emissions of many midsize countries.
Marathon Petroleum’s logo also enjoys prime placement in the Guardians’ ballpark, which I first noticed when I caught an Orioles-Guardians game in Cleveland on cable earlier this month. A large Marathon logo sits below the baseline between home and first, a half-dozen logos are stacked on a padded column in front of the team’s dugout, and Marathon ads have been rotating through on computer-generated TV-visible signage behind home plate since the company became a Guardians’ corporate sponsor in 2021.
Corporations advertise with sports teams for two main reasons: to build trust and increase exposure. According to a 2021 Nielsen “Trust in Advertising” study, 81% of consumers completely or somewhat trust brands that sponsor sporting events, second only to the trust they have for friends and family. Jersey patches especially attract attention. Nielsen estimates that the average value of the live broadcast exposure a patch sponsor will receive over a full regular baseball season will exceed $12.4 million.
Marathon Petroleum partnered with the Guardians because it wants baseball fans to think it’s a good corporate citizen. It is most definitely not. The Guardians should find a more suitable sponsor when the company’s contract runs out at the end of the 2026 season—one that protects and preserves, not one that endangers public health and the future of the planet.
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Oil Giant's AFCON Sponsorship Denounced as Plot to Set Off Carbon Bombs Across Africa
"As Africans, we need to show TotalEnergies the red card," said one climate campaigner.
Jan 12, 2024
As the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament gets set to kick off in Côte d'Ivoire this weekend, Greenpeace on Friday satirically skewered French oil giant TotalEnergies, the event's main sponsor, for "greenwashing" its harmful impacts on the people of Africa and the global climate.
In a cheeky three-minute parody video, Zimbabwean comedian Munashe Chirisa and British writer and performer Jolyon Rubinstein play Total executives "wilfully exploiting AFCON's millions of global viewers to boost its image, while continuing to profit from climate-wrecking fossil fuel extraction across the continent."
"The beautiful game is a chance to show how much we care about Africa, its coastlines, vast forests, and savannas, which sneakily might be hiding some oil we can suck back to Europe," the pair banter. "I mean, if it wasn't for the oil fields we plunder across your splendid continent, we wouldn't have made $6 million every 90 minutes."
"While you Africans have been going through a cost-of-living crisis, we have just recorded our most profitable year yet," they note. "Ka-ching!"
"So what if our industry produces enough oil to fill a stadium every three hours and 37 minutes," they ask. "We spend a tiny percentage of our budget sponsoring AFCON to keep you Africans happy whilst we blow the big bucks on planning massive carbon bombs that will blow up the continent."
The comedians continue: "Yes, the science says we need to stop all new drilling, but our shareholders say 'fuck that, fuck all of that.' Which is why we're the company with the most new oil and gas explorations on the whole African continent."
"You think you've seen droughts, famines, and forced migration? You ain't seen nothin' yet," they promise. "We're committed to turbocharging the climate crisis."
While Africa produces the world's lowest per-capita carbon emissions, the continent is suffering disproportionately during the worsening planetary emergency, with 17 of the 20 countries most threatened by global heating located on the continent of nearly 1.5 billion people.
"It's time to kick TotalEnergies out of our stadiums. Our passion for football runs deep, but so does our love for a clean, healthy Africa."
"Fossil fuels—the lifeblood of climate-wrecking companies like TotalEnergies—are poisoning the lungs of African athletes and soccer fans," Greenpeace Africa oil and gas campaigner Thandile Chinyavanhu said in a statement.
"Science says we must transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy. But Total continues to displace communities for new oil drilling, and spew toxins before shipping massive profits back to Europe," she continued. "Total is turning AFCON from a celebration of African unity into a grotesque greenwashing stunt."
"It's time to kick TotalEnergies out of our stadiums," Chinyavanhu added. "Our passion for football runs deep, but so does our love for a clean, healthy Africa."
Samm Farai Monro, co-founder of the group Kick Polluters Out and creative director of the Magamba Network, a Zimbabwe-based civil society organization, said that "TotalEnergies is guilty of foul play. They like to portray a clean, green image of themselves with their sponsorship of AFCON. But the reality is very different."
"At a time when scientists are telling us to stop any new fossil fuels projects, Total is developing more oil and gas resources in Africa than any other company," Farai Monro added. "As Africans, we need to show TotalEnergies the red card. We love football. We hate pollution!"
Greenpeace accuses Total of "a wave of destruction across the African continent," including the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which, if completed, will transport up to 230,000 barrels a day of crude oil nearly 900 miles from fields in the Lake Albert region of western Uganda to the Tanzanian port city of Tanga on the Indian Ocean.
In addition to exacerbating the climate emergency, EACOP and the related Tilegna oil field development would displace around 100,000 Ugandans and Tanzanians, according to a Human Rights Watch report published last year.
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