Dr Jan Boehmer
Assistant Professor of Sport Management at the University of Michigan. He investigates sport’s social and economic impact, focusing on the effects of media, data analytics, and brand building. He has worked in sports media and marketing for over 15 years.
Twitter: @DoctorBoehmer
Email: jboehmer@umich.edu
Dr. Brian P. McCullough
Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Michigan. His research focuses on the bidirectional relationship between sport and the natural environment in a subdiscipline of sport management called sport ecology.
Twitter: @mcculloughbrian
Climatic change impacts all aspects of daily life, including how individuals consume sport as participants or spectators. To sustain sport and the natural environment, sport organizations and events are under greater scrutiny to reduce environmental impacts throughout the planning and operations. In response, the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) led the formation of the Sports for Climate Action (2017) to encourage the sport sector to align with climate targets from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Events like the Olympic and Paralympic Games attract thousands of athletes and millions of spectators to a region and inevitably have an environmental impact. The Paris 2024 Games are a prime example of the latest efforts to reduce the environmental impact of such a large-scale event (e.g., using renewable energy and recycled building materials, emphasizing public transportation, reduced air conditioning).
Despite these efforts, there are growing criticisms of the Games and their environmental targets, pushing them to reduce their impacts further and as far as to suggest limiting the scale of the Games (e.g., limiting the number of spectators attending). While these radical suggestions may not be practically feasible, the environmental efforts of the Olympic and Paralympic Games often receive negative publicity for their efforts, which serve as attractive news stories because of the ‘click’ rates during the Games.
Communicating complex systems and initiatives to a public audience with limited understanding or attention makes it difficult to convey the dependent systems and that some environmental impacts will occur regardless of the best-intended efforts. The public is not just a passive audience but an active participant in this crucial mission. They must understand and support these initiatives, as their awareness and actions can significantly contribute to the success of environmental efforts in sport. However, researchers have yet to explore the prevalence of news stories detailing sustainability initiatives surrounding the Olympic and Paralympic Games to better understand the general breadth of such stories in the news cycle.
To gain such an initial understanding of how media in the United States report on sport’s environmental impact surrounding the 2024 Paris Games, we collected news stories published by English-language newspapers and magazines (including their online publications) in the U.S. using the Nexis Uni database. Newswires, press releases, and web links not stemming from established newspapers and magazines (e.g. blogs) were excluded to avoid duplicates and promotional content. Even though this might limit the sample, mainstream media outlets have remained the main source of credible information for most U.S. households and therefore provide a valid starting point for our exploratory investigation. Stories were collected between May 26th, 2024 (two months before the start of the Olympic Games and the point where Google Trends data indicates an increase in interest in the topic) and September 8th, 2024 (the final day of the Paralympic Games). All articles that included the keywords “Olympics”, “Olympic Games” or “Paris 2024” (“Paralympics” or “Paralympic Games”, respectively) were included in the initial sample. To calculate the share of articles addressing the Paris 2024 Games’ environmental impact, we filtered for those mentioning “Sustainability” or “Climate Change”. Although there are additional phrases that might be used to describe ecological issues surrounding the Games, sustainability and climate change are the most frequent and therefore likely to be mentioned in the majority of relevant articles.
Overall, 10,866 articles mentioned “Olympics”, “Olympic Games”, or “Paris 2024” during the 106 days of data collection – which amounts to an average of more than 100 articles per day. However, only 210 (1.93%) of those articles included the phrases “Sustainability” or “Climate Change”. To put this into perspective, more than twice as many articles included references to fashion (427), and an additional 245 articles discussed “Snoop Dogg” or “Flavor Flav”.
For the Paralympic Games, we obtained a total of 864 articles during that same timeframe, 34 (3.94%) of which referenced “Sustainability” or “Climate Change”. Even though the overall number remains low, the share of articles mentioning the environmental impact of the Games was considerably higher when news outlets discussed the Paralympics.
Taken together, these results indicate a relative lack of media coverage regarding the environmental efforts surrounding the Games. This is especially remarkable as several environmentally-related incidents provided seemingly newsworthy content. These include the “poop protest” regarding the water quality of the river Seine, the controversies surrounding the Olympic Village and the U.S. bringing AC units, and the effects of the heatwave during the Games. Although these topics received some attention, in-depth coverage regarding the greater impact on sporting events and how such events might have to adjust was low.
Overall, questions arise on whether mainstream media are currently fulfilling their crucial role in generating a public understanding of environmental efforts across the sport sector, or rather focus on content that guarantees higher click rates due to celebrity involvement. Further analysis is warranted not only on how such reporting is framed but also on how and why media outlets might be more or less inclined to report on environmental issues in the realm of sport.
