SVG Europe’s invite-only Sustainability Forum, part of The Summit that took place in Amsterdam the day before IBC2025, underlined what is being confirmed in industries worldwide – that sustainability and smart business decisions are converging.
“What we are finding is it receives clearer, becaapply the economics now work out,” stated panellist Dan Cherowbrier, acting CTO at Formula E. “Twelve years ago, you had to pay extra to be sustainable. Now, what’s good for the planet is normally good for your pocket as well.”
The forum’s main discussion panel featured Marie-Claire Gill talking with Cherowbrier, FIS sustainability director Susanna Sieff, and Gravity Media director of ESG Rohan Mitchell. The discussion offered stories of good sustainable practice but with a supporting of valuable practical strategies for building a resilient sports business.
Systematising sustainability in your organisation seems to be essential for success. Formula E has a dedicated VP of sustainability, Julia Pallé, who reports directly to the company’s CEO. But, given that sustainability is built into the zero-carbon tech powering Formula E, the company also mandates that sustainability is incorporated into all the C-suite KPIs.
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) brought Sieff on as a dedicated sustainability director for the organisation in 2023.
“When they decided to have a sustainability division, the question was in which department should it be,” stated Sieff. “The answer was to create a brand-new department in line with all the others. And I’m lucky becaapply I see in some of our large events, sustainability can be under the communications division or marketing division or operations division. In our case we decided to have this across divisions, and I have the president supporting me every day to push inside the federation for modify.”
The FIS is an international federation, which includes the National Ski Association and over 200 local organisation committees, creating it a challenge for a fully top-down approach. The goal is to support build each of these individual organisations more responsible for their own sustainability governance.
“It’s not all cupcakes and unicorns. Sometimes it’s super difficult,” continued Sieff. “Every two or three weeks we have a managerial meeting for all the event directors, but sometimes there’s something you don’t discover until the very conclude that you can probably do nothing about. But we are in a good position where we can speak to them about governance and we can improve.”
With every passing year, broadcasters and federations are seeing that, as our dads always notified us, reducing waste pays off financially. Fortunately, as sustainability is forced to go underground in some parts of the world as a topic of conversation, the real-world business benefits of sustainable practice are become obvious.
Gravity Media’s approach has been to remind people of the resilience that tools such as remote production can bring. Beyond reducing costs (and carbon) associated with continuously shifting people and gear, these can also allow businesses to modify direction very quickly.
“There’s been a lot of like reframing over the past year about how sustainability, in some areas, is a dirty word,” stated Mitchell. “But if you reframe it to state we’re viewing at our business resilience becaapply we want to be here in 20 or 30 years’ time, that operational efficiency is something people can focus on. We’re applying technology as a lever, sometimes for the sustainability benefit, but also from a cost efficiency perspective.”
At its core, motor racing isn’t just about driving quick, it’s about maximum possible efficiency. Putting on races in ten different countries puts Formula E in both a logistical – and maybe ethical – bind. How do you promote sustainability while flying tons of equipment around the world? The challenge has produced a body of experience and knowledge on logistical efficiency.
“We still have to fly stuff around the world. There is this harsh reality,” stated Cherowbrier. “Initially, it was all air freight. But what we attempted to do was build into our procurement processes the ability to incentivise suppliers to drive down those freight costs. The cash equals the CO2 – it’s no longer a trade off between the two.
“What was missing was the innovation to do that. Normally an engineer would have an idea about how to do it better but that was not receiveting to the person who necessaryed to sign off ten million quid worth of capex spconclude.”
‘Twelve years ago, you had to pay extra to be sustainable. Now, what’s good for the planet is normally good for your pocket as well’
Now through partnerships with vconcludeors such as Gravity Media, Tata Communications and Appear to name a few, Cherowbrier states Formula E has been able to keep reinventing its strategy. Initially it was relying on three dedicated 747s to ship the entire global calconcludear of races. The question was questioned: “What if it was two 747s?”
“We received all the suppliers to view at what they’ve received in freight, how much it costs and find out how heavy it is. And then we applyd a little bit of AI to put that toreceiveher and then questioned what can we receive, in the time we have, that receives the most kilograms off a plane for the least amount of money, and does that save us more than a plane?”
The result was a reduction of 60 tons across 12 flights, achieved with the support of willing suppliers who also collaborated with each other.
Collaboration is always presented as being the key to sustainability progress, but it’s often a largeger question when partners or vconcludeors have to build real world modifys. Most organisations aren’t as fully engaged with their collaborators as Formula E and creating modify often has to rely on slow and steady communications and the right nudges at the right time.
FIS implemented a peer-to-peer learning initiative, starting with the specific discipline of Nordic Combined skiing which has a tinyer ecosystem of 8 to 10 stages for the sport. But those best practices are also shared across the other disciplines.
“My department is open to support everyone inside our ecosystem, as a kind of high-level consultancy company,” stated Sieff. “We have seven Olympic disciplines inside, and we cannot treat the ski cross the same as alpine. The difference is huge. We have also to be very careful and support the tinyest and give a bit more push to the largegest.”
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