Benchmarking sustainability in sport through indexes

In sport, data is everything. We try to measure everything; to improve sporting performance and commercial performance.

With its growing importance and interest, it’s only natural that the industry wants to do the same with sustainability. But without any real standard benchmarks, measurement and progress is tricky.

In this edition of the podcast, we speak with two guests who are trying to rectify this through the creation of indexes with robust and scalable criteria to discover how sustainable sport is, and where the opportunities for improvement lie.

Our first guest, Cristiana Pace, a motorsport engineer of more than 25 years and founder of strategic sustainability agency and pending B Corp Enovation, talks about the Sustainable Circuit Index she put together alongside Right Hub, which assessed major motorsport race tracks on their sustainability credentials.

Sport and sustainability professional Tim Trefzer joins us for the second half of the podcast to explain how and why he helped create the Sustainable Sport Index 2021 Benchmarking Report, exploring the state of play across US sports venues.

Pace and Trefzer discuss:

– How they designed their methodologies to gather and analyse sustainability data

– Why indexing and benchmarking is crucial for sport to improve its environmental and social performance

– What motorsport circuits and sports venues need to do to address sustainability regulations and stakeholder expectations