Towards Humanistic Management in professional sports: How to make mobility and fan-related tourism more sustainable?

Introduction: Travel and mobility choices in football and their impact on sustainability

In late summer 2022, an otherwise mostly sidelined issue made headlines in the European (sports) press: Travel activities of top level-football clubs and their emission footprints. As PSG had just returned to Paris from Nantes, going by plane instead of using a high-speed train for less than 400 kilometres, serious questions were raised on the disregard of sustainability considerations in such mobility decisions. At a press conference a few days later, PSG manager Christophe Galtier made fun of a critical journalist’s intervention by invoking the idea of using a char à voile (a sailing car frequently used at French beaches) instead, all the while star players could not stop laughing at his side. All this round about the same time that French forests stood on fire, and rivers had dried out, both arguably also due to rampant climate change.

Ignorance and neglect, however, are not the only responses to the climate crisis among top level-professional football clubs in Europe. In the German context, the association of all professional football clubs playing in the top two leagues (Deutsche Fußballliga, DFL) has started a process of including sustainability objectives in their reporting already back in 2020. According to a two-wave survey among its constituents, 90 % of all 36 clubs then playing in the first two German divisions claimed that ecological sustainability was a priority area for them, both before and also during times of the Covid-19 pandemic (DFL, 2020a). Among the several activities listed were efforts in garbage reduction, energy and resource saving measures as well as enhanced attempts to generate power from renewables. As regards mobility-related activities, a clear focus on fan-related forms of travel could be ascertained, e. g. through subsidised tickets for public transport on match days. However, there was also some awareness to incentivise staff to make more use of public transport, whereas in terms of team mobility and competition-related travel, if mentioned at all, the preferred measure was to compensate emissions (when flying), not to consider alternative means of travel. All in all, the DFL’s attempt to establish compulsory sustainability reporting from the season 2023/24 on has been greeted with much interest, but also with criticism, as it seems to be too heavily focused on reporting at the expense of setting up more far-reaching transformations, most notably in emissions reduction (Stübner, 2022).

Even though voluntary so far, quite a few professional football clubs in Germany have already embarked on intensifying their sustainability reporting recently. Undoubtedly an exercise in marketing and creating brand-reputation as well, such reports convey the preferred pathways of how to achieve more sustainable mobility and travel choices around football. Fortuna Düsseldorf, in their CSR-Report for the 2020/21-season, explicitly listed mobility measures geared towards both match day travel (fans) and business mobility (staff) as priority areas of their (future) eco-accounting (F95, p. 15). The report, however, stayed silent on team travel and the controversial issue of short-haul flights around matches.

Another club from the second division, 1. FC Nürnberg, also highlighted in their elaborate and detailed Sustainability Report 2022 its efforts to ‘green’ fan mobility (1.FCN, pp. 4, 56–7) and to strengthen e-mobility in its day-to-day business activities (ibid. p. 49). Again, though, considerations on changing mobility choices around team travel are not discussed. This might be regarded as understandable given the presumed effects of scale around fan and spectator mobility (cf. Dosumu et al., 2018; Triantafyllidis, 2018) compared to team travel. Nevertheless, it constitutes an interesting asymmetry and takes a whole set of controversial practices, for which substitutes would be available (e. g. many domestic flights), as well as debates on travel necessity (e. g. training camps in faraway places over summer, exhibition tours there) off the table.

Increasingly so, such mobility and travel choices around football have become the centrepiece of debates on greening the football industry. When football authorities in the UK hence declared a weekend in March 2023 the ‘Green Football Weekend’, it was telling, which activities were placed under this rubric, and which were not. Some clubs promised to plant trees for each goal scored, others offered their fans an own green energy tariff, all the while some players were wearing green armbands in an apparent effort to raise (or demonstrate) ecological awareness. None of the clubs involved, however, switched from short-distance flights across the country to less emissions-intense forms of mobility (cf. Liew, 2023).

Not considering this an appropriate measure, though, clashes with the results of several studies that have demonstrated the huge impact of travel activities in and around a football club on its ecological footprint (e. g. Perreira et al., 2019). For top level-football clubs in the UK, most notably those in the Premier League, this does not seem to matter much. As another recent study reported, out of 100 games in this league, 81 saw teams going there and back by plane, many of them short-distanced, and quite a few so-called positioning flights involved, through which empty planes are simply moved to an airport more convenient to pick up players and staff (BBC, 2023).

Are more sustainable practices around football – including travel and mobility activities – hence restricted to small, regionally operating branches led by motivated individuals, such as in case of the ‘world’s first carbon neutral football club’ Forest Green Rovers (cf. Papp-Vary & Farkas, 2022)? Are recently intensified efforts to include sustainability measures in the reporting of the clubs in Germany mere lips service, as claims to ‘climate neutrality’ seem to be less about reducing the overall ecological footprint? Does most of what we see in this domain rather resemble some balancing of this very footprint through the acquisition of ever more emissions certificates, thereby keeping unsustainable mobility and travel choices in place, as some civil society watchdogs decry (cf. Ballesterer, 2023)?

Far from being a niche topic, sustainability choices in and around football clubs do constitute a significant area of business and management activities. Resembling a veritable commercial sector, and generating a huge outreach and impact (through exposing millions of fans, followers and media consumers to its products and adjacent activities), the football industry not only bears a particular responsibility. Through changing practices and advancing more sustainable pathways, it could also work as a trendsetter, or a role model. Observing recent trends in and around professional football clubs might hence help to gauge the prospects for transformational change in business and management practices.

In what follows, we briefly relate our topic to the overarching concept of this Special Issue: ‘Humanistic Management’. We then specify in which sense sport-related mobility, travel and tourism constitutes a dynamic field, in which questions concerning more responsible forms of management have taken hold for quite some time. This allows us to present a case study on (changed) travel practices in and around five German professional football clubs as an exploratory investigation into the prospects for (more) humanistic management in this particular sector of the economy. Based on six qualitative, in-depth interviews with select representatives of five clubs, we seek to elucidate whether sports-related tourism has the capacity to act as role model in steering societies towards more sustainable, and hence: more humanistic modes of action.

Humanistic Management and the mobility/tourism-sustainability-nexus in sports

The fields of business and management have undergone a transformation towards including sustainability concerns and hence also: ideas of ‘humanism’ more thoroughly (cf. Melé, 2016). Whether this change is piecemeal and mostly rhetoric in nature, or rather genuine and truly transformative, is not least decided by how much practices and activities in economic sectors will also align with principles of ‘Humanistic Management’. According to the editors of this Special Issue, such humanistic management draws on philosophical notions of human dignity, embeddedness and a break with unfettered growth ideology, which leads to the destruction of habits, and the whole supporting eco-system in the not so distant future. From the point of view of management, moving towards humanism would hence require not only a firm idea and vision (cf. Spitzeck, 2011), but also assumed responsibility, will and resilience in implementing measures, which have the capacity to authentically disrupt destructive dynamics, both in the workplace and beyond.

Whereas, in a classic formulation, Melé (2003) has distinguished three approaches to humanistic management (one focused on social conditions of work, for which management has to provide a fertile ground; one focused on organisational culture, in which human-centred values need be nurtured to shape future business activities; and one in which management’s task is to instil a shared ethical self-understanding in all employees and staff to recast the enterprise as a virtuous community), we opt for an even more encompassing understanding of the term. Accordingly, ‘Humanistic Management’ is to transcend narrower understandings of company-employee relationships (cf. Dierksmeier, 2016) in that it asks how management can shape and transform practices, which impact upon wider lifeworlds, includes those of its clients and customers, or the whole humanity, in the sense of enhancing human dignity. A business/management choice such as continued preference for short-distance flights over alternative, less emissions-intense forms of mobility could hence be seen as potentially harmful for human dignity, as the consequences and the resulting climate-killing footprint undercut the very basis for such dignity. What hence is requested is more than a PR-like exercise in a superficial ‘humanising of business procedures’ (Della Lucia et al., 2021).

At the same time, any change in management towards humanism “in favour of sustainability and stewardship” (Melé, 2016, p. 47) needs be balanced with more traditional business considerations. Or, in Spitzeck’s (2011) words, there needs to be a business case for humanistic management, if only to sustain an enterprise, which is both transforming and has the capacity to transform its environment, over time. It is in this sense, that a movement towards humanistic management is very likely to entail trade-offs between the furtherance of responsible practices and the continuation of financial and commercial sustainability (also through ‘less humanistic’ choices in the short to mid run) in a competitive market.

If we accept that humanistic management rests on a fundamental re-orientation of mind-sets (ibid., p. 51) and a “thoroughgoing paradigm change of the predominant economic theories and practices” (Dierksmeier, 2016, p. 9), the case of sports industries, and the question of mobility and travel practices therein, constitute an interesting practical field. In particular so, as we can indeed find an ever increasing appreciation of social and ecological responsibility in this domain, if only rhetorically. However, the mobility/tourism-sustainability nexus in sports constitutes a pertinent case for three more reasons.

First, tourism in general (of which fan-related forms of mobility and travel as well as team and staff travel of sport clubs are merely one, and a very special domain) has been discussed controversially for quite some time as surrounded by many ethically questionable practices (cf. Büscher & Fletcher, 2019). However, this is but one side of the coin, as Della Lucia et al. (2021) point out: tourism seems to bear paradoxical qualities, as it on the one hand magnifies the ecological footprint, heavily contributes to climate change and is riven with exploitative labour practices and precarity. On the other, it clearly represents one field, in which the search for a fundamental re-think towards more humanistic practises has become very visible recently.

Second, sport-related tourism and mobility has the capacity to not only move people spatially but also to mobilise them on a mass scale towards certain objectives, or to nudge them towards more sustainability. In that the field links sports actors (professional clubs as commercial entities, but also athletes as role models etc.) and a large number of people (as fans, followers, and also travellers around sporting events), it carries at least the potential to leverage business choices to amplify effects of more humanistic management in a larger audience (cf. Kulczycki & Koenigstorfer, 2016). Nudging the spectators towards more sustainable choices through incentives (free public transport, etc.) as well as by example (e. g. through switching to less emissions-intense forms of mobility) translated isolated management decisions into a transformative force for larger populations.

Third, humanistic management in sports need not start from nowhere. Even though most observers do agree that humanistic management requires nothing less than a ‘system change’ (cf. Waddock, 2018), it may take recently strengthened ideas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in sport as a starting point. According to such an understanding (CSR 3.0), a business constitutes a proactive shaper of conditions, not least towards social and environmental concerns (Schneider, 2015). In this sense, the management of a professional football club resembles but one type of business, all the while financial data of such a club in any of the bigger football leagues across Europe reveals that we speak of at least medium-sized companies in most instances (for the German context, cf. Werheid & Mühlen, 2019). The acknowledged need for more sustainable choices and practices in the sport (and particularly: the football) business has hence been discussed under a CSR frame for quite some time, both conceptually (cf. Breitbarth et al., 2011; Keller, 2014; Walzel et al., 2018) as well as operationally (cf. Deloitte, 2019; imug 2016).

It is in this sense that we seek to position a qualitative case study of five professional football clubs in Germany as an attempt to explore the potential of, and the challenges towards more humanistic management in sports. A particular focus here will be questions of tourism, travel and mobility activities around the sport, as these contribute hugely to the magnitude of the ensuing ecological footprint. Those topics are intimately linked to emissions and climate change-considerations, and are hence indicative of the depth and direction of any transformational change. We will first briefly discuss sport-related travel and mobility in more general terms and then proceed to introducing our case study and its main results.

Sport-related travel and mobility as priority fields for CSR and Humanistic Management

Professional football has developed into a business worth billions, in which travelling at national and international level is an integral feature (DFL, 2020b). Different types of mobility can be distinguished, most notably: team travel alongside competition, training camp travel, business travel and fan travel (Schwark, 2016). While the first three types of travel and mobility are internal to a club’s activities, the fourth is undertaken by ‘externals’ around events and match days, yet can be shaped by a club’s ambition to impact on the mobility choices of its followers. In calculating their own ecological and in particular, carbon emissions footprint, many professional clubs have come to assert that fan mobility accounts for the largest share of CO₂-emissions caused, ranging between 60 % and 74 % in some recent estimates (VFL Wolfsburg, 2018; Hertha BSC, 2020). Other areas of mobility that contribute significantly to the footprint are team and business travel (ibid.).

Among the five central fields of action for CSR interventions, and such of ‘responsible management’ more generally, are: human resources management, social commitment, value creation, communication and environmental management. Although ‘mobility management’ and thus travel behaviour could in principle be categorised under environmental management, its huge impact can lead to the idea that it should rather be perceived as a separate field of action and transformative intervention. Particularly its measurable size – CO₂-emissions of selected and alternative forms of mobility – lends itself to such reasoning. That particularly German professional football clubs have tended to develop more holistic understandings of CSR activities, including an emphasis on emissions management, has been demonstrated by comparative studies (cf. Jäger & Fifka, 2020). This at least is the impression one gets from self-reporting.

All in all, however, more specific measures to raise awareness and to actually reduce CO₂-emissions in professional sport seem to be rather rare. Ten years ago, 1. FSV Mainz 05 was one of the first Bundesliga clubs to have its own carbon footprint determined and to offset part of the emissions generated (Göbl et al., 2013). In addition to the possibility of making any such compensation payment available for climate protection projects, it would also be possible, though, to reduce the level of emitted pollutants in the first place (ibid.). During the last decade, some more professional football clubs in Germany have followed suit and have their carbon footprint calculated nowadays. Still, so far only a few clubs, such as VFL Wolfsburg and Hertha BSC make transparent, in which areas pollutant emissions do occur (cf. VFL Wolfsburg, 2018; Hertha BSC, 2020). Given a population of 36 (or 56, in case the third division, de facto also professional, is included), the low number of such flagship activities rather indicates that there is ample room for improvement.

A rather specific measure towards achieving more responsible travel behaviour would be to avoid unnecessary traffic, or to shift the necessary travel to public and ecologically less burdensome transport systems (Keller, 2014, p. 119). Again, as regards fan mobility this includes efforts to connect stadium facilities to the local public transport system, and to also lobby local authorities to provide such a link. Spectators can then use public transport free of charge, for instance with their tickets to the game. Another possibility is the introduction of bans for individual transport (in private cars) at the match venue, provided that regulations allow for doing so and alternative modes of transport are available (ibid.). Therefore, the implementation of a more environmentally friendly mobility management would require close coordination between local authorities and the professional clubs.

More responsible travel behaviour could also be seen from the perspective of creating a role model for the spectators and fans (Walzel, 2019). Through exemplary behaviour on certain topics, a football club could in principle encourage fans and members to become more active in regards to sustainable development in their own daily activities (imug, 2016). Targeted and credible actions and measures would allow a sports club not only to raise awareness but to make alterative pathways of mobility more acceptable and normal. A case in point here would be conscious club decisions to switch team travel (also in a publicised manner) from air transport to coaches, or even better: railways. A more conscious planning of training camps, including an assessment of the carbon emissions resulting from the choice of travel, would constitute a step in this direction and set an example. Communicating such choices then can have the effect of encouraging fans to follow – and most likely would resonate in at least some football fans, as statements from fan activists across Germany make clear (cf. Unser Fußball, 2021).

That quite a few German football fans actually expect the football clubs and associations to change their ways as regards ecological sustainability (alongside hotly debated issues such as financial sustainability and democratic governance) was not least indicated by the fact that during the 2019/20-season, more than 2600 organised fan groups, and more than 14 000 individuals had signed up to a petition demanding change (ibid.). The crucial component in enacting any such change would be credibility, though. Communicating goals and scoring PR scoops and leaving activities, as they were rather risks to backfire. For example, the German national team had to deal with much criticism because it travelled a distance of about 240 kilometres from Stuttgart to Basel by plane (Kicker, 2020). Especially because the DFB otherwise reports a lot about sustainability measures, publishes sustainability reports transparently and has joined the United Nations Climate Protection Initiative (ibid., DFB, 2019).

Interestingly, among German football clubs one of the first movers has been VFL Wolfsburg, a club that is sponsored by carmaker Volkswagen, which has been at the epicentre of many scandals and debates recently. In terms of both sustainability reporting of its professional football-branch as well as the implementation of measures, it seems to be comparatively advanced. In this regard, the promotion of sustainable mobility in the workforce, including training camps and match travel, and the reduction of CO₂-emissions in Scope 1 (direct, through business activities) and Scope 2 (indirect, through purchasing electricity etc.) have been singled out as priority areas early on (VFL Wolfsburg, 2018).

Travel choices and measures in German professional football: A trend towards more sustainable mobility?

The language of sustainability reports might be one thing, but how credible are German professional football clubs positioned on more responsible mobility management? In order to put more empirical meat to bones of ideas, concepts and speculation, several in-depth expert interviews with key stakeholders and persons tasked with managing and implementing social responsibility measures have been conducted. A particular focus was on aspects of more responsible travel behaviour in this regard.

In late spring 2020 (during the heights of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic), 28 interview requests were sent via e-mail to all clubs from the First Bundesliga and ten more clubs from the Second League. The structure of the CSR-working group of the DFL, which includes representatives of the CSR departments from the respective clubs, was used as a guide (DFL-Stiftung, n.d.). Tour operators that belong directly or indirectly to the club (e. g. Bayern München – FC Bayern Tours and Borussia Dortmund – Best Travel) were also contacted. In addition, travel agencies that help coordinate the travel of the professional teams, such as Liga Travel and the DFB travel agency, were sent an invitation for the interview. Of all potential respondents contacted, eight agreed to be interviewed, with 12 rejections and 12 non-responses. Interestingly, some of those (politely) rejecting to be contacted again justified this with reference to the fact that in their club, the CSR unit was not competent in the field of travel activities. Given the pecularities of the time frame, it seems reasonable that many club officials and staff were busy doing other things, as the league activities had just been curbed due to the pandemic, and before that matches had been played in front of empty stands. On the other hand, this very time also was one, in which active fans rose to the occasion and became more vocal in demanding the structures and governance of the game to be reformed.

All interviews took place between 30 June and 31 August 2020. (This de-selected two more potentially willing interviewees from the sample, as they were not available during this time.) The six remaining interviewees came from five different clubs; one requested anonymity:

• Nico Briskorn (B1) Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, VFL Wolfsburg;

• Isabelle Götze (B2a) CSR Unit, SC Paderborn;

• Neele Rickers (B2b) Consultant to the Executive Board, Head of Marketing, Head of CSR & Development, SC Paderborn;

• Stefano Ridolfo (B3) Contact Person for CSR, SpVgg Greuter Fürth;

• Stefan Wagner (B4) Managing Director of Wagner, Office of CSR, Marketing and Communication, Chief Coordinator of ‘TSG ist Bewegung’, external consultant to TSG Hoffenheim;

• Anonymous, working at a club from the Second Bundesliga (B5).

The interviews were conducted online, with the help of videoconferencing software, and lasted between 30 and 45 minutes. The respondents were asked questions on the basis of a semi-structured questionnaire, which posited a rough sequence of questions without imposing a strict and standardised regime (cf. Kaiser, 2014). This way, the experts had ample opportunity to bring in their positions, ideas, and arguments. Thematically, the questionnaire targeted aspects of the club’s respective travel activities, and focused on the extent to which responsible travel behaviour is implied in the work of the CSR department, or in the corporate strategy. Afterwards, all interviews were transcripted and analysed with the help of MAXQDA. This allowed for a grouping of arguments, and the formation of (sub-)categories to structure the material (cf. Döring & Bortz, 2016). In the remainder of the article we report briefly on the three main clusters of responses that emerged. The responses of the experts were translated into English for reasons of comprehension and readability.

Discussion and conclusion

So, where does this leave us? We attempted to make clear that travel and mobility choices along activities of professional football clubs in Europe have recently garnered more attention. Mounting criticism is on emissions-intense travelling (and hence forms of tourism), which do not seem to be necessary in the eyes of fans, followers and the wider society. Some attempts, particularly in German professional football seem to indicate that a re-think has already started, also and in particular in club and league management.

Does that signal the advent of more humanistic management in professional football? Perhaps, yes and no. Inasmuch as mobility choices (in combination with other considerations on eco-friendliness and reducing the carbon footprint of football businesses) become more of a focus in managing a football club, there seems to exist a vast potential for transformative change along the lines of humanistic management.

A more critical investigation, however, reveals that many of the potentials are not yet tapped, recognised as priority areas of action, or fall outside the scope of those pushing for more responsible choices within the administrative structures of football clubs. A qualitative foray into select cases of German clubs, and with the help of experts coming from these contexts, made clear that by and large, responsible travel behaviour is still rather sidelined in management considerations. All the while many clubs seem to have responded to criticism mostly with measures in offering alternatives for fan mobility, some do carbon offsetting, and many others are busy (if at all) in calculating their carbon footprint first, also in view of compulsory sustainability reporting starting soon.

Even when flights do not seem to be the preferred method of the day for most of the professional clubs in Germany – or are at least less normal compared to their counterparts in the UK – travel choices do not seem to be discussed under a sustainability perspective very often. Anecdotal evidence corroborates this finding. When, in early 2023 and therefore outside the scope of our empirical study, one of the members of our research team met a whole team including staff of a second division club on the platform of a train station, apparently going back from an away game by train, this very decision was not even considered under an emissions-perspective. Instead, it was argued that going by train was to help the players relax and stretch. The bus coach, which had taken the players to the train station, went back empty in parallel.

Seen from this angle, there is still much room for improvement in the mobility and travel management of professional football. And this in particular, as some of the measures at least (optimising travel itineraries, the prioritisation of climate-benign modes of transport, the reduction of emissions from not essential activities, the contracting of green accommodation there, cf. Perreira et al., 2019) do not seem to constitute a rocket science, but require awareness, will and dedication. Due to their huge public outreach, football clubs could actually also leverage any such activities also to shape the perceptions of their followers. In doing so, they could well become agents of humanistic management.