The global sports industry is a thriving industry, spanning various popular sports leagues such as the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and the National Basketball Association (NBA). For example, the NBA itself was projected to earn a whopping $10 Billion in revenue during the 2021-2022 season (Young, 2021), which evidently illustrates the intensity and lucrativeness of these sports leagues. However, because of such an intensity, the intensity in consumption behaviour during these sporting events rises as well, leading to rising concerns of environmental pollution.

For these popular sports leagues, many teams have their own stadium in their respective cities. As such, during the league itself, each team would have to frequently travel out to their opponent’s home stadium to compete. For example, it was found that each MLB sports team had to travel 40 times to another stadium to compete during the league (Triantafyllidis, 2018). Furthermore, it was also found that many of these sports league fans travel along with these sports teams to support them during their away games (Triantafyllidis, 2018). It was also found that these fans often traveled in their personal vehicles, adding to the increase in carbon emissions per capita (Locke, 2018). While the distance traveled varies according to where the away games are, it is clear that since the MLB is a nationwide sporting event, spectators who follow their sports teams have to travel long distances across the US states. As such, the carbon emissions emitted while traveling to and fro to the stadium by the sports team and their fans would definitely accumulate over time, resulting in a large amount of carbon emissions deriving solely from these sporting events.

Locke (2018) further substantiates this claim as he found that there was a statistically significant relationship between the increase in the Air Quality Index (AQI) values of the city when there was an MLB game being hosted. As such, this illustrates the pollutive effects of the consumption of major sporting events by spectators.

In my opinion, while technology has advanced and live-streaming sports events has gained a foothold in the industry, nothing can replace the authentic sporting environment of physically supporting your team in large stadiums with the camaraderie of your fellow supporters. The reduction of the attendance by fans would also weaken the appeal of sporting events. Additionally, there would be a redundancy in the large stadiums built, resulting in the degradation of these buildings, leading to more environmental pollution. As such, the challenges associated with live sports entertainment are more complex as it has to take into consideration the nature of the industry where fans are equally as important as the players themselves.

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