Climate change has presented a new suite of health and safety, legal, and operational challenges to which the sport sector must respond. At the same time, many professional leagues and sport federations are adopting environmental strategies that include emissions reductions, such as the UN Sport for Climate Action Framework’s Race to Zero, which will see its signatories halve emissions by 2030, and reach carbon neutrality by 2040. In this paper, we argue climate change is producing recurring disruptive events which might shake sport organizations out of inertia regarding scheduling. We suggest rescheduling might be used as a tool for mitigation and climate adaptation.

Organizations are increasingly prioritizing green, or pro-environmental, goods and services due to the heightened urgency of environmental concerns. However, this trend has given rise to instances of greenwashing, or deceptively marketing pro-environmental claims with or without intention ( Delmas & Burbano, 2011 ). Greenwashing has been present in marketing campaigns for several decades and is gaining attention in sport organizations, though scholarly exploration remains limited. This study utilizes Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) framework for a scoping review to investigate the extent of green marketing in sport and potential greenwashing occurrences. Analyzing scholarly literature from 1990 to 2022 resulted in 34 articles for synthesis. Despite growing public awareness, most greenwashing in sport research is closely tied to recreation and tourism. Identified themes, such as social leveraging, highlight knowledge gaps at the intersection of sport marketing and sport ecology urging further scholarly inquiry in this area.

In 2021, Adidas celebrated the sixth anniversary of its partnership with Parley for the Oceans (Parley), an organization dedicated to reducing oceanic pollution by repurposing recovered plastic, like fishing nets and plastic bottles. The athletic retail titan has demonstrated a commitment to fighting the issue of plastic waste in the fashion and sport industries. This partnership led to Adidas’ adoption of Parley’s plastic mitigation strategy, AIR: avoid, intercept, and redesign, and serves as an example of how some sport organizations have incorporated environmental concerns into their overall corporate social responsibility initiatives. Serving in the role of Adidas’ Assistant Director of Global Partnerships, students are challenged to understand environmental concerns sport organizations face and propel this partnership forward in new, innovative, and creative ways. Because of their global influence and visibility, sport entities should be particularly invested in their perceived corporate social responsibility as it relates to the natural environment, while also understanding how their business contributes directly to environmental issues. Students will gain an understanding of environmental sustainability within corporate social responsibility, while (a) assessing Adidas’ efforts to strategically combat the world’s plastic pollution crisis and (b) identifying additional avenues for sport organizations to promote environmental sustainability.

Major League Baseball (MLB) is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to its season duration, geographic footprint, and largely outdoor nature. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to investigate whether U.S.-based MLB fans’ climate change skepticism and experiential processing influenced their climate change risk perceptions and adaptation willingness, and to determine if those relationships were further influenced by fans’ sport identification with MLB. A cross-sectional survey design tested the study’s purposes using a sample (n = 540) of self-identified MLB fans. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling on the Mplus 8 statistical package to test the hypothesized model. The results indicated consistencies across low and highly identified MLB fans on their climate change risk perceptions and willingness to adapt, but revealed group differences between the factors influencing fans’ risk perceptions of climate change. The findings provide early empirical evidence to support the United Nations’ (UN) Sport for Climate Action Framework, and managerial implications regarding the nexus of climate change and sport consumer behavior research.