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football
sustainability
initiative
sustainability
initiative
We are creating a framework for the integration of corporate social responsibility (CSR) into the football business. It is our ambition to share best practices, measure our impacts and combine tradition and innovation to find a holistic solution for todays challenges in football.
Our initiative is based on the systematic collection of current CSR-approaches from science and practice. Qualitative interviews with experts from various european football clubs as well as quantitative surveys with key stakeholders will set the foundation for our framework.
Through our continuous approach we aim to contribute to more sustainable business operations in European football.
Providing a tool for stakeholder evaluation
Measuring the outcomes & impacts of CSR
Creating value for clubs & stakeholders
Defining reporting standards
Sharing best practices
Laying the foundation for a management system
In the past decades football clubs have transformed from non-profit institutions into modern businesses, operating in a very complex multi-stakeholder environment. Businessmen brought new regulations, management approaches, financial investment and economic background into a sport that once belonged to the communities. The commercialization and globalization of football has taken many clubs out of the communities and environment from which they came and forced them to revolutionize their operations on and off the pitch.
Many traditional football clubs struggled to find a way of keeping their traditions on the one hand while allowing innovation on the other. This trend led to major challenges for the clubs – from a societal and economic point of view.
Football clubs and their environment have always reflected social challenges such as intolerance, violence homophobia or discrimination. But the commercialization of the sport also led to new economic and financial problems. Mismanagement, Financial doping, outdated structures, corruption, intransparency, corporate influence, match-fixing scandals, failed foreign takeovers or political lobbyism are only a few to mention.
Many clubs have already implemented more responsible and sustainable operations by transferring the business approach of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into the football case. CSR can be defined as 'the responsibility of enterprises for their impact on society' (European Commission, 2011). It was Archie B. Carrol (1991) who originally characterized the term by distinguishing philanthropic, ethic, legal and economic responsibilities of businesses. Furthermore, CSR is closely related to the Stakeholder Theory which was originally detailed by R. Edward Freeman in 1984.
When integrating the CSR-approach into their business, football clubs need to consider the various particularities regarding their operations (e.g. transfers, ticket pricing, sponsorship, merchandising, media rights), stakeholder-relationships (e.g. fans, sponsors, players, employees, youth, communities) or ecological environment (e.g. energy efficiency, waste and water management or emissions).
Let’s implement CSR in the football business to promote principles, such as compliance, good governance, fair competition, transparency, community involvement, anti-corruption, tradition and fair operating & labor practices.
Fans, members & customers
Commercial partners & sponsors
Local & global communities
Media
Environment & Infrastructure
Science & Research
Our network consists of a variety of European football clubs and is based on a multi-stakeholder approach. We aim to achieve holistic results by involving various interest groups and combining evidence from science and practice.
It is our ambition to involve people (e.g. football fans, players, youth, employees, communities) as well as private and public institutions (e.g. media, commercial sponsors, partners, NGO’s), while always having one eye on the environment.
Clubs can become part of our network today to benefit from the expertise of other European football clubs and their local, national and global stakeholders.
Various best practices from around the world show that cooperation is a very successful business strategy when it comes to corporate responsibility. Football clubs can become part of our network today and co-operate with other clubs to optimize their own strategy and operations.
We offer the framework, platform and scientific background – the clubs offer professional opinions, knowledge and expertise. In that way we can all benefit from the Football Sustainability Initiative and make a change in the future! Check our benefits below!
The collection of best practices and the scientific background of the initiative gives us the chance to provide strategic solutions for economic, social and environmental challenges of the football business – considering the clubs' values and objectives, KPIs, shareholders and stakeholders, outcomes and CSR-communication.
We are delivering a tool for the systematic stakeholder evaluation of football clubs – considering the different opinions of fans, commercial partners, employees, players and communities. The tool provides a standardized set of aspects including the collection, analysis and presentation of data while giving the opportunity to take individual aspects into account.
Measuring the impact of corporate responsibility is a tough challenge since it’s hard to put reputation, corporate image, employee satisfaction, fan identification, loyalty or customer satisfaction into numbers. Still, we need statistic significance to prove the valuable outcomes of our activities. Our approach aims at comparing performances of different clubs in different countries.
Our framework is based on the bundling of information provided by various European football clubs.
Thus, we can reduce risks and information costs, strengthen our business operations, increase our
efficiency and productivity off the pitch and benefit from competitive advantages over other industries through collaboration.
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has set a world wide standard for sustainability reporting. But is it transferrable to the football business? Does it consider the specialities of football clubs regarding sponsors, players, youth, fans or communities? We are suggesting a framework for sustainability reporting in football.
We are delivering a structured platform for football clubs to present their sustainability reports, share best practices and tell stories about their CSR-initiatives, while giving the clubs the opportunity to stay in contact with their
CSR-connections throughout Europe.
And why not have a CSR-conference?
In a next step we aim at finding a way to integrate our framework into a CSR management system. It is our core ambition to cooperate with IT specialists and database programmers in the future to improve our business analytics, reduce our manual activities and increase the user-friendliness of our framework.
We aim to deliver exceptional standards for the clubs.
Hence, the focus is on the participating clubs only – while we will always remain in the background. We will not promote the initiative on social media platforms or through any other online or offline campaigns. All information provided to third parties can be found on this website only.
Jo Jäger studied sports, business and law at Bayreuth University, Germany (Bachelor & Master of Science). In his masters degree he specialised in marketing, services management and sports ecology.
During his studies he worked with Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Everton FC, Manchester City FC, Queens Park Rangers FC and the Football Club Social Alliance, before achieving the certificates CSR-Manager and Corporate Responsibility Manager. Furthermore he provided scientific support for professional football clubs in Germany (e.g. 1. FC Nürnberg) and represented Bayer 04 Leverkusen at 2013's Premier League Community Outreach Seminar funded by the European Commission and the British Council.
The Football Sustainability Initiative is based on his doctoral thesis at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), which has its focus on corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and stakeholder management in professional European football.
Johannes Jäger
Bülowstraße 37
90491 Nürnberg
Contact:
+49-(0)-176-32608665
jj@sustainablefootball.net
