Planning & Development
Sustainability begins at home, and having an environmentally conscious club, stadium or ground can go a long way towards achieving your goals. From a business perspective, it can also serve as a critical brand-building tool, encouraging a sense of trust and community among supporters.
Irwin Mitchell’s planning, development and environment expert, Erica Ives, talked us through some of the challenges and opportunities faced by sports clubs. “Stadium development isn’t just about having a sports ground in place. It’s about creating a venue for people to go to – a community hub. An obvious example would be Tottenham’s new stadium. They’re incorporating lots of other factors, such as travel plans for long-distance fans. There may also be an associated housing development, which would incorporate affordable housing. So, they’ve thought about social and governance points as well as environmental considerations.
Environmental constraints are a problem for stadium development. Often stadiums will be in an urban area like a city centre, so if you’re looking to expand the stadium, you might struggle to find the space to do so. Completely demolishing and redeveloping is also very costly.
Environmental constraints are a problem for stadium development. Often stadiums will be in an urban area like a city centre, so if you’re looking to expand the stadium, you might struggle to find the space to do so. Completely demolishing and redeveloping is also very costly.
“Then, if you look outside of an urban area, perhaps looking at greenbelt development – from an environmental perspective, that’s often an immediate no.
Although it’s important to point out that greenbelt development doesn’t always mean it’s greenfield. It’s easy to envisage greenbelt always being part of the countryside, but that’s not the case. However, it’s worth exercising caution for the sake of your club’s reputation and its relationship with its supporters.
“The other point for clubs is if you're trying to move out of an urban area, fans are used to going to one particular destination. That's where the hub is. You've probably got a massive history there which they’re very attached to, and they might not want to travel a long way out of town. For example, Wasps made the decision to move their stadium to Coventry – that could have been a factor that led to their demise. There’s lots of constraints, particularly when you consider biodiversity net gain, travel and the social aspect of sport.”
Returning to a key theme in this report, as always comes the challenge of money. While there’s a conception that a move to sustainability is expensive, it’s often the case that after the initial cost of development, more sustainable buildings will save you money in the long term.
Mark Fairbrother explained the financial justification when developing Millwall FC’s sustainable new training facility, which Irwin Mitchell advised the club on:
“Sustainability went hand in glove with Millwall’s stadium development. The big running cost of our current training grounds is gas, electric and water.
A lot of the design was therefore around retention of water and around looking for sustainability in the building itself. But that should link to making it a financially justifiable project. We’re talking anything between a £20 million and £40 million spend over the next few years.
If we can save ourselves £500,000 in utilities costs, suddenly – coupled with other savings in rent and various other things – it makes more financial sense and lessens the scrutiny from the board.
“But if you can get rid of finances being the driver it does make it better, because then you’re looking at five factors – and finance isn’t the lead one. If it’s purely finance, you’re always going to go with what gives you the best return, be that players, events, whatever works.”
Michelle Leavesley summarised that while the current cost-of-living crisis can make these decisions tough, it’s important that any commitment to sustainable planning is genuine. “There’s also that challenge of retrospect – the pandemic taught us a lot about that. It’s important that anything built now needs to have sustainability at its heart. It’s not enough to put a few solar panels on your roof and call it a day, fans and governing bodies expect a genuine, tangible commitment.
“But decisions around finance can make it very tough. We’re in a cost-of-living crisis, we’re trying to keep the cost of things down for people. And sometimes you’re weighing up the social and environmental aspects, that tension between those two areas. With ESG being so high on everyone’s agenda, I’m a lot more hopeful for the future, but we’ve still got to put right some of the issues of the past.”