The crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic has damaged the European football economy. Although not included in the balance sheet of clubs, the preservation of the natural heritage and a stable environment is essential to perpetuate the practice of round football. In an interview with Ecofoot, Antoine Miche, President of Football Ecologie France, explains why football clubs must redouble their efforts to better integrate CSR issues into their operations.
Some French professional clubs, like AS Saint-Etienne, have recently indicated to us that they want to reposition CSR at the heart of their new development model. Do you think that CSR themes will continue to gain importance in the development strategies of French professional clubs in the coming years?
It is a certainty, but in the overall strategy of the club and not only in development. According to numerous studies, companies that focus on the long term and seriously deal with social and environmental issues are developing better and are significantly less affected economically by crises. In football, we have seen a rise in CSR actions over the past decade and for several reasons, often better and better structured via a foundation (PSG, TFC, OL, OM…), a specific association (ASSE Coeur-Vert, Kalon Club…) or an endowment fund.
The first reason is the fact that citizens, institutions, communities and businesses are becoming more and more committed to sustainability issues in order to reduce socio-economic inequalities and minimize environmental risks. In this context, the world of professional football, considered to be privileged, cannot be “out of society”. Keeping close to the club the usual communities that feed it economically and humanely, such as supporters, sponsors and the community, requires keeping a strong bond, an adequacy with the evolution of the latter. The club must therefore maintain and regularly challenge its nurturing and reciprocal relationship with its main communities, which often involves actions outside the usual core business of a football club.
Second, CSR is an excellent vehicle for innovation and differentiation. Clubs need to offer added value that changes over time to gain reputation and revenue. The development of CSR actions requires going to areas of discomfort, testing the unknown, such as setting up a day on homophobia or education in ecology, developing a local living room of the employment or a social entrepreneurship competition with disadvantaged populations. Again, this feeds the club communities, strengthens ties with economic partners and the surrounding area. This added value, which we could call “shared value”, contributes to the club’s “license to operate”, namely its legitimacy of existence and action in an ever-changing environment.
“CSR is an excellent vehicle for innovation and differentiation”
Finally, and most importantly, let’s not forget that our economic system emerged from after World War II and is no longer compatible with planetary limits and social and economic inequalities become extreme. We have seen and lived for years dramatic and dangerous events which upset the society and the economic actors, who stop football: pandemic like the covid-19, long and violent strikes (yellow vests, pensions, etc.), storms, droughts and exceptional and growing heat waves… All of this resets the strategies of clubs, both professional and amateur. The covid-19 pandemic, for example, which puts football almost into bankruptcy in just a few weeks, is at the outset a problem that crosses climate, biodiversity and globalization: our lifestyles and our human activities, including the passion for football. and its associated consumption, upstream generate excessive grabbing of wild lands in order to exploit them and transform raw materials into billions of consumer goods. This causes ecosystems to collapse, and animals are therefore forced to move closer to cities and other animals over very limited areas. Hence the ease of transmission of thousands of viruses from animals to humans. Most viruses are benign but only one is needed, which is spreading at the speed of globalization (business travel, mass international tourism, supply chain in several countries for a single consumer good, etc.) for qu ‘it stops the world economy and kills several hundreds of thousands of people! So club strategies, if clubs and sport in general want to survive over time, will have to take these issues into account and deal with them seriously. Natural heritage and climate are perhaps the biggest assets of a business, with a stable social climate and cooperative humans. This is not seen in the balance sheets of the clubs but on the contrary it is seen in their profit and loss accounts which suffer heavily. Football must therefore reinvent itself and CSR is the best engine for.
How will this increase in power translate concretely?
