Football Summit 2025: Sustainable football production and broadcasting reaches turning point

“The biggest hotspots are crew travel and power,” said Jennie Blackmore, Sky Sports head of production at last month’s Production Workshop on Sustainable Football Coverage, sponsored by EMG / Gravity Media and held as part of Football Summit 2025. And those two “hotspots” are the biggest carbon emitters for most businesses inside or outside the entertainment industry.

But sports broadcast has its particular challenges because of the many, many moving parts that come together to create memorable live events. Even when they’re overseen by a well-oiled machine like Sky Sports, vendors, service providers, freelance crew, venues and even fans all need to be brought along on what is a pretty steep learning curve when it comes to adopting sustainable practices.

Blackmore explained that sustainability thinking is something broadcasters and decisionmakers need to take responsibility for. Saying that crew and partners need to green their travel is one thing, but sustainability leaders will give them the tools to do it.

“We should be starting from the top,” Blackmore said. “That includes the federations supplying the right infrastructure for their freelance community. We work with the federations to supply EV chargers in the compound. And we’ve worked with them to supply venue power on the ground, which reduces the need for diesel generators.”

When forced to use generators, broadcasters now have an abundance of zero emissions battery technology to rely on, or if internal combustion generators are still employed HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) fuel can be used – Sky has been using this as a diesel alternative for several years now.

HVO produces up to 90% fewer CO2 emissions than traditional diesel and is becoming widely available. But the goal should always be to get emissions to actual zero, and good access to venue power is a big step towards that.

“Even though the move from diesel to biofuel was significant, we calculated that if you move from generators to venue power – and 13 out of 20 Premier League clubs also get their energy from renewable providers – you can reduce your emissions by another 84%.”

Starting a virtuous circle of sustainability

Avoiding moving teams to the location in the first place can be an even better solution to lower emissions. In the UK the top host broadcasters for football all have some sort of remote production implementation available. Bringing remote production into the mix also makes for changes across the rest of the workflow. When OB vehicles are onsite, they aren’t having to do the heavy lifting of production and require less power and less fuel to run. The lower power requirements also make it easier for football clubs to accommodate them onsite, or for them to run on their own battery power.

“The new versions of our trucks can run five hours with their onboard battery technology,” said Rohan Mitchell, ESG director at EMG / Gravity Media. “That gives you the opportunity to use shore power, but you have that backup and redundancy. The new format of OB trucks helps because it’s less power draw and more batteries available onsite.”

Production gear is also being made to run more efficiently, with hyperconverged design enabling multiple broadcast functions to be enabled by a single piece of hardware, which means a smaller footprint, which means being able to use a smaller vehicle.

This integration of multiple stakeholders, from vendors to venues, helps sustainable broadcast to form its own virtuous circle with each part of the chain helping the other parts to improve.

“The Premier League over the years has been able to build pre-cabled stadiums,” said Mitchell, “and that is saving broadcasters resource and time. Or technologies like PoE (power over Ethernet) cameras can become part of a permanent install for certain kinds of shots.”

EMG / Gravity Media has also been a member of BAFTA albert’s Sports Consortium, which meets regularly to develop best practices for sports broadcasters across the UK. The consortium has been working on a guidance document for sports venues which gives them specs and best practice for creating more sustainable venues, including making them easier to integrate with broadcast teams. The resource will be made available through The British Association for Sustainable Sport (BASIS).

Given that food waste has such a major environmental effect, changes in something as seemly innocuous as crew meals can make a huge difference.

“We don’t need broadcaster catering anymore because there’s plenty of catering in the stadium. That was a really easy change, and everyone was on board. Everyone collaborating in these forums is super useful, because then we’re all working in the same direction. You actually get more from being together,” added Mitchell.

And the changes that the Premier League has implemented have started to make positive ripples throughout the sport.

“The standard the Premier League has set we are now starting to see filter down to EFL, WSL, SPFL,” added Sky’s Blackmore. “They’ve seen the work that the Premier League has done and have realised that it isn’t as scary or costly as they thought. It’s important to push federations over individuals and freelancers, because that is where you will get the big, measurable change.”

Talk to your teams

But the biggest sustainability impact broadcast sports can have is through the content itself. Sports has a huge, international, cross-cultural reach with the potential to change hearts and minds across the world. Editorial time is precious however, and to get the message across requires planning and coordination.

“The squabble over editorial time is fierce,” said Fergus Garber, head of production for TNT Sports. “Typically at half time, once you’ve factored in the advertising, you’ve got about four minutes to talk about the game. Trying to persuade producers to talk about sustainability in that short time they have is very, very difficult.”

“It’s important to push federations over individuals and freelancers, because that is where you will get the big, measurable change”

Garber believes the way forward is to normalise the discussion about sustainability within the programme itself. This can be solved by giving producers as much information as possible and then encouraging commentators to weave sustainability into their regular commentary about the game, stadium or environment.

“Collaboration is massive,” said Garber. “I always go back to the fundamental and that is educating your team and bringing them on the journey with you. And if you can get to the bosses, that’s even better. If you can make them understand how important it is, then everything almost just falls into place.”