At SVG Europe’s Football Summit 2025, held last month at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, a special Production Workshop on Sustainable Football Production, sponsored by EMG / Gravity Media, brought together broadcasters and experts to discuss how to make football coverage more sustainable.

Hosted by Mary-Claire Gill, the first half of the discussion brought together Julia Boettger, director of operations at Sky Sports in Germany, and Moritz Ladwig, project manager for green production at Sportcast.

Very few businesses can claim to be ahead of the curve when it comes to the climate emergency, but Sky was one of the first broadcasters to have establish a coherent response to the environmental crisis. In 2018 it launched its Sky Ocean Rescue Campaign to reduce plastic use and in 2020 committed to be net zero by 2030. Sky’s German colleagues followed suit with their own ambitions to help make sports broadcasting greener.

Sky Deutschland identified five pillars of action to drive the transformation, which included measurement, training, storytelling, and working with partners.

“It helps to have a guideline to know where to start,” Boettger, explained to the attendees. “It’s such a big topic, and we can’t change everything from one day to the next. But having a map that you can go through for each sport can be quite helpful.”

The work is being done in collaboration with Sky’s partners among the major sports leagues, including the DFL, DFB, and the German FA, as well as Formula 1 and Wimbledon.

Data feeds the change

Sportscast is the host broadcaster for top-tier football in Germany including the Bundesliga, Second Bundesliga and German Cup. Ladwig has been essential in helping the broadcaster realise its green goals, starting with the first pillar of measurement.

“We try to get as much primary data as possible to calculate a precise carbon footprint,” said Ladwig. “It’s always difficult because there are so many date points you might not get – for the distribution, for example, which is kind of black box, even though many great initiatives like Greening of Streaming are trying to get that data.

“We can’t change everything from one day to the next. But having a map that you can go through for each sport can be quite helpful”

“The first thing we did was set the boundaries to be onsite production. We calculate everything that happens in the stadium – all the people travelling there, all the vehicles, and power consumption. We do everything up to the contribution. Everything after contribution isn’t calculated, because we don’t have good data yet and we don’t want to estimate too much.”

Sportscast’s carbon calculator vendor is German green consultancy ClimatePartner. The broadcaster’s minimum aim is to always collect energy consumption data for the broadcast compound as well as fuel consumption of any generators used. The ideal is to also get energy numbers for the vehicles, but this is not always as easily available.

Real change seems to come from being able to combine the fine detail of data collection with bold action. Ironically, using the sky as little has possible has been a big win for Sky – and other German broadcasters. Sportscast recently got rid of helicopters for its aerial shots and now uses strategically placed drones.

“I think we cut half a ton of CO2 just by removing the helicopter,” said Ladwig.

Forming better habits

Changing travel habits is an easy way to reduce carbon emissions. Sky Deutschland has mandated that if a destination can be reached within five hours, teams must take the train. Any exceptions need to be approved at the EVP level.

“It was quite a fight when it was introduced,” said Boettger. “but negotiating it was not an option. It was a top-down decision.”

“It needs to be a habit,” added Ladwig. “Once it’s applied, people will be frustrated at first, but the more they do it, they will accept it – and probably because they see advantages coming from it.”

Ladwig cited the Cup Final coverage, which has been produced according to more sustainable principles over the past three years, where better work habits are now taken as a matter of course. But putting together workable systems for data collection across the production took time.

“Our first approach took around six months. Now we are faster, because everything is in place. But to build a form that asks freelancers and venues for their data, and to speak to technical vendors took half a year, because we want primary data to calculate on.”

Working together and cooperation is, unsurprisingly, the key to success, according to Boettger:

“Work with partners, work with suppliers, work with the league, and with the freelancers. We are all in this, so why shouldn’t we communicate and share ideas?”

Read more Football Summit 2025: Sustainable football broadcasting reaches turning point