We, The Green Runners, have been working in partnership with England Athletics (EA) since September 2023, promoting and supporting environmental sustainable behaviours and attitudes among their stakeholders, primarily athletics and running clubs.
On 8 May EA announced (1) a partnership with Citroën, introducing a conflict with our principles and, in our view, a disconnect between the values they are encouraging their clubs and races to consider and what they are currently portraying through this sponsorship.
We recognise that EA is a non-profit organisation for whom funding is a constant challenge.
We acknowledge that Citroën’s sponsorship is focussed on the EA’s Personal Best Foundation and Youth Programme, aspects of EA that we are not involved in.
We also thank EA for consulting with us about the partnership from an early stage. EA invested considerable time in taking counsel from The Green Runners, Badvertising and BASIS (The British Association for Sustainable Sport) and shaping a sponsorship package centred around EVs that they believe is consistent with their principles of sustainability.
However, despite how this sponsorship is activated, the reality is that the public facing image is still a Citroën logo alongside the EA logo. This will appear on promotional materials around events, including race bibs. This is directly promoting high polluting combustion engine vehicles. It is the opinion of The Green Runners and Badvertising that through their partnership with EA, Citroën are conducting sportswashing, the practice of high-carbon companies using the positive image of sport to deflect from their problematic practices, as set-out in this article (2).
We campaign against all forms of sportswashing and have signed the Game Changer pledge (3). We’ve been asked many times whether using a high-carbon company’s money for good outweighs the significant issues of taking the oil money. Our short answer is no. You can read our long answer in this article (4).
So where does this leave our relationship with EA?
This outcome does not reflect our recommendation. To remain true to our mission and values we have decided we cannot continue to work in a formal partnership with EA.
We remain committed to supporting run clubs, run groups and races to build a more environmentally sustainable future for our sport. In the short term we will bring club focussed tools and resources onto The Green Runners website and will support as many clubs as we can. We also do not want to close the door to supporting EA in the future, we will continue conversations and will review the situation if the sponsorship changes.
EA has recently appointed a dedicated part-time Sustainability Manager. This is a positive step forward and we remain hopeful that we will continue to see progress from important governing bodies like EA displaying best practice internally and demonstrating the behaviours that a more sustainable and responsible future for our sport requires.
Sources
1 England Athletics press release EA press release
2 Desmog article, 2022
3 Game Changer pledge Game Changer
4 Sportswashing – should events take oil money and use it for good? Article