Supporting the FA’s transition to a sustainable business model, through delivering their ‘Playing for the Future’ sustainability strategy.
The Challenge
As the governing body of English football, with 13.5 million active participants and home to one of the most iconic stadiums in the world – Wembley Stadium, The FA has incredible potential to influence positive environmental and social change at regional, national, and international levels. As a leading voice, and owner of the game the country loves, they needed to transition football’s business model to a sustainable one.
Since 2022, Think Beyond has worked with The FA to implement its sustainability strategy, Playing for the Future. The strategy has three pillars focussing on climate action, resources and biodiversity, and scaling impact throughout the football ecosystem. The challenge was to make this ambition a reality and transform their business operations.
The Solution
Think Beyond works as an extension of the FA’s team to put sustainable business change at the heart of its decision-making and operations, including but not limited to:
- Building a roadmap for the implementation of their strategy and creating the action plans needed across the business.
- Embedding a measurement framework in the organisation to track and evaluate progress against KPIs.
- Driving sustainability communications to support the delivery of their strategy .
- Supporting the FA to meet the UN Sport for Climate Action target of a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2040 through a robust emissions inventory and development of decarbonisation plans. This includes working closely with data owners across the FA to improve data collection and quality.
- Driving the continual improvement of their sustainable event management system.
- Completing the FA's first-ever climate risk and opportunity assessment for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (CFD) providing comprehensive, high-quality information on the impacts of climate change on business resilience.
- Driving supply chain management and procurement support to determine who they do business with and how.
- Delivering a sustainability roadmap for the Women’s Professional Game.
The Impact
- Enhanced their corporate reputation as the FA adopted a more robust approach to carbon accounting.
- Changing the way the FA works with suppliers across the business, building towards a more sustainable procurement model and engaged supply chain.
- Ensured legal compliance through the UK Climate-related Financial Disclosures which they are now audited for under financial regulations – it is fundamentally part of their requirement to operate.
- Successfully ensured their ISO20121 certification through the delivery of their sustainable events management system.
- The Women’s Professional game now has a sustainable roadmap to deliver the expansion of the game.
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