BAFTA albert supports the film and TV industry to reduce the environmental impacts of production and encourages content creation that supports a sustainable future. ​Both strands – reducing the physical impact of making content, and using content to get the green message out – are embedded in the work it does with the sports sector.

The albert Sports Consortium was launched in 2020 as a way to bring focus on sustainability in sports, primarily in the UK, with launch members including BT Sport, Sky Sports, BBC, ITV, Sunset + Vine, IMG, Premier League Productions, The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), Formula 1, Aurora Media and Channel 4.

The Sports Consortium has evolved over time with a focus now on working groups that can deliver on specific projects. Contributions from organisations outside of the broadcast sector have also been essential, including the likes of BASIS (British Association for Sustainable Sport), AELTC and Sport Positive.

Sports has been a catalyst for change in the media industry, as a platform for trailing new tech and a vehicle for reaching all parts of society, a power the member broadcasters are keenly aware of.

Unique challenges

April Sotomayor, BAFTA albert’s head of industry sustainability, notes that sports needs to develop solutions tailored to its own issues.

“The environmental impact of sports production doesn’t seem to be at the same level as drama (the screen content with the highest carbon intensity),” she says. “But there are unique challenges around sustainability, including fast turnarounds, which mean there’s less time to plan than in other genres.”

At the end of last year, albert published its sustainability requirements for venues. Developed with the sports working group and other industry organisations, including SVG Europe, the document is designed to be a guide for helping sports venues prepare for partnering with broadcasters to produce as sustainable a result as possible. In the past these preparations were made on an ad hoc basis, with sustainability often an afterthought in what can be very rapid set up and tear down times.

“Broadcasters would show up with limited influence,” explains Sotomayor. “They would be having these conversations on their own.”

The guide consolidates most of the things broadcasters might need at a venue to have a green event all set out in simple bullet points. Suggestion areas include greening facilities and crew support, making lower carbon power more easily accessible, and greater awareness of green travel options.

“It has made it easier. I am able to put that document in front of Premiership Rugby, for example, and say, this is something we would like clubs and venues to help us with,” says TNT Sports head of production Fergus Garber. “It’s very carefully written, it’s non-threatening. It’s really important that it’s collaborative. We understand that green isn’t necessarily free or cheap, so when we’re asking these things we do it in such a way that we want you, the venue or club, to come on this journey with us, because we will both benefit in the end.”

Sports drama, climate truth

Embedding climate storytelling into sports broadcast has always been a priority for the sports working groups. Sports provides a forum to inform a wide-ranging audience from a position of authority. But it requires skill to get it right.

What’s difficult to solve is that sports fans are fairly single-minded when they watch their sport,” says Garber. “They want information about their team, and they don’t like being preached at. So what you do is explain the problem, and then you offer the solution very close together. You don’t just explain the problem and leave it hanging. It’s always good to explain ways you can help to solve the problem.”

“Everyone will have their own net zero strategies. At albert we need to make sure we are as supportive as we can be”

One of the very first initiatives launched by the Sports Consortium was a memorandum of understanding among UK sports broadcasters that they would share climate-related footage with each other without money needing to change hands. Whichever broadcaster held the rights to a requested bit of content would inform the licensor that it could be passed along freely, circumventing the need for payment and legal paperwork. The agreement was used to share the likes of video of Australian cricket cancelled by wildfires and the impact of typhoons on the Rugby World Cup in Japan.

The storytelling focus has also been included in albert’s sustainable venues recommendations, which urges stadiums and venues to share their own environmental commitments not only for the benefit of their broadcast partners, but also for sharing with the public.

“We’re trying to create a repository of information which is kept up to date that commentators and sports producers can use,” says Garber. “That helps the clubs and stadiums tell their own story and it helps us tell a story that is appreciated by the club – and by the sport.”

Last autumn BAFTA albert launched its albert Academy, a hub for sustainability training across multiple disciplines, that offers e-learning and in-person workshops, as well as bespoke executive briefings. The organisation’s sports work is also reflected in the course options.

Among the courses are Climate Onscreen Workshops, which help storytellers learn better ways of incorporating the climate conversation into the content they produce. A 90-minute Climate Onscreen Workshop dedicated to sports is aimed at roles such as researcher, producer or director with discussions of common roadblocks and solutions for putting sports content in an environmental context. There is also a dedicate Sports Production workshop that helps technical teams learn practical measures to reduce climate impacts.

“Everyone will have their own net zero strategies,” says albert’s Sotomayor. “At albert we need to make sure we are as supportive as we can be.”