How The Olympics Bought Attention To A Pattern Of Sportswashing

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We find joy in the dark winter months by enjoying our favorite sports teams. In the US, National Hockey League and National Basketball Association games are in mid-season. Major League Baseball spring training has just started. March Madness will be upon us soon, where we will root for up-and-coming college athletes. And the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games just ended, offering fans lots of moments of excitement and national glory.

Sporting events play an important role in today’s social life — they are a fun pastime for the public, invigorate the local economy, facilitate tourism, and improve regional development. Sports offer us connections to our community and inspire us to live healthier lives. Yet, as we savor sports, we also need to take a critical step back and examine if and how keenly our sports teams are incorporating sustainability into their mandates.

Too often today we’re seeing major sports leagues boast of green initiatives that have hardly any guts to them. It’s called “sportswashing.”

Sportswashing occurs due to business nature of many sports teams. Sports sponsorships infuse billions of dollars annually into the sporting world and fossil fuel companies are some of the most insidious sports sponsors as they attempt to greenwash their reputations.

Don’t you feel burned when companies, non-profits, and even governments make deceptive or outright false environmental claims about their ecosystem and climate protection strategies? We need to apply the same scrutiny to sports so that the pleasure they provide is part of a larger equation of measurable, positive environmental impacts.

The Fallacy of Clean Energy at the Olympics

The International Olympic Committee’s September 2025 sustainability report was clear: electrical energy during the Games would be 100% green and fed by certified renewable sources. And Italy’s largest electricity company, Enel, backed up those pledges by guaranteeing the supply of entirely certified renewable electricity for event venues. Enel built new primary distribution substations in Livigno and Arabba and built and upgraded distribution infrastructure in the Livigno, Bormio, and Cortina areas. The latter were designed to benefit residents post-Olympics.

Some 2026 Olympics’ grid enhancements were steps forward, certainly. Italian oil and gas giant, Eni helped to sponsor the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Milano and Cortina. But Eni is profitable from planet-heating operations and should not have been chosen as a sponsor in the midst of the climate crisis.

Self-described as an “integrated energy company,” Eni draws upon different energy sources to “create increasingly sustainable solutions for individuals and businesses.” Eni puts emphasis on natural gas as “an essential aid to energy security” and lauds natural gas characteristics that “can have an important role when it comes to progressively lowering the GHG emissions linked to energy production.”

Those proclamations are poppycock and little more than sportswashing.

Fossil fuels are definitely not sustainable and destabilize nations rather than embed energy security. LNG is literally nothing more than compressed methane. Natural gas — and the processes to bring it to consumers — create all kinds of greenhouse gas emissions associated with extracting it, compressing it, and transporting it. The entire process results in about a third more greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal at end use locations. Promoting fossil fuels also masks the rise of renewable energy across the globe.

Greenpeace released a video titled, “Oilympics,” which shines a spotlight on Enel’s role in fueling the climate crisis. It restated a demand that the IOC ban all fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship “in order to protect the future of winter sports and stop polluters from hijacking the Olympic spirit.”

So, as has become an ironic norm, a company that is driving the climate crisis and putting winter sports at risk used the Games to distract the public from its fossil fuel destructive impact.

Polluters, it’s time to pay up.

Sports and their Environmental Cover-Ups

HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, who is chair of the IOC Sustainability and Legacy Commission, drilled down that the Games were delivered more sustainably than ever, “from construction to venue operations.” He had called for 2026 sustainability measures “to  serve as a model for future Olympic Games and other major events worldwide.” HSH conceded that “climate change poses growing challenges for mountain regions,” alluding to tension in the sports economy — a $2.3 trillion dollar ecosystem of mega-events, adventure tourism, sporting goods and equipment, and active lifestyles.

Fossil fuel corporations use sports sponsorships to brighten up their tarnished images. When their logo is placed side-by-side with elite athletes, the hope is that fans’ attention gets drawn away from the deteriorating climate and the responsibility that the fossil fuel corporations have, due to their profitability-at-all-costs motives.

A 2026 insight report from the World Economic Forum cites escalating environmental risks that are affecting sport globally. “Heat stress, extreme weather and pollution are disrupting competitions, diminishing spectator experiences, limiting community well-being, and affecting the supply chains and operations that underpin the broader sports economy,” the report concluded. “The sector also contributes to these pressures through the resource-intensive nature of events, sporting goods, infrastructure and travel, resulting in significant carbon emissions, water use and waste generation.”

As the WEF argues and the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics exemplifies, sports economy now stands at a critical inflection point. Extreme climate conditions are escalating health threats that undermine athletic performance. Sport is also a significant contributor to these pressures. “It creates a self-reinforcing cycle in which growth that is not decoupled from high emissions, intensive resource use, and significant waste generation progressively undermines the environmental and social conditions essential for the sector’s long-term viability,” the report continues.

Nonetheless, there are future solutions to limit environmental damage from sports and their sportswashing sponsors.

• Champion resource stewardship: Implement water stewardship to strengthen business resilience; scale circular business models; harness sporting events to pilot and scale sustainable materials and consumption models.
• Place sport at the heart of cities: Leverage green and blue spaces as sporting assets; design sporting infrastructure for community well-being and environmental resilience; advance sustainable mobility.
• Catalyze purpose-driven capital flows: Activate shared impact through strategic sponsorships; mobilize investment partnerships across the capital ecosystem.

These are positive ideas to move toward sport sustainability. Is anyone in profit-driven sports world listening?

Resources

• “An oil and gas corporation killing winters with its planet-heating pollution is sponsoring the Winter Olympics. Could it be Eni more ironic?” Federico Spadini
  Greenpeace. February 3, 2026.
• “Environmental benefits of hosting the Olympic Games.” International Olympic Committee.
• “How organizers of the 2026 Winter Games made clean energy a priority.” Jennifer McDermott.  Associated Press. February 21, 2026.
• “Manufacturing winter: The Olympic Games in a warming world.” Abhinandan Kumar. The Lowry Institute. February 26, 2026.
• “Milano Cortina 2026 sustainability efforts in the spotlight.” IOC. February 17, 2026.
• “Polluting sponsors add 40% to 2026 Winter Olympics’ carbon footprint: Report.” Editorial team. Carbon Copy. January 20, 2026.
• “Sports for people and planet: Insight report.” World Economic Forum. January 2026.
• “Sports industry faces revenue decline due to climate impacts, report warns.” Martina Igini. Earth.org. February 26, 2026.
• “The Great Olympic lie: Untold story of Winter Games’ huge environmental impact.”Andy Bull. The Guardian. February 23, 2026.
• “The man who runs the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics talks Games as global experience.” Martino Carrera. Women’s Wear Daily. February 6, 2026.
• “The unsustainability of 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.” Alessandro Ferrari. Online Journal of Environmental Communication. December 13, 2024.
• “The Winter Olympics in Italy were meant to be sustainable. Are they?” Ruth Sherlock. NPR. February 5, 2026.