3 minute read
Euro 2020 and The Environment
56 IMPACT Euro 2020 Whilst much of the fuss over the new-look, decentralised Euro 2020 is about the impact on the tournament as a spectacle and a sporting contest, you also have plenty of knock on effects in terms of the environmental impact. Matches will be taking place in 12 stadia from Dublin to Baku, with some only being used for group stage matches, and the semi-finals and final taking place at Wembley. The tournament being spread out has potentially changed things for better and for worse, while the retention of 2016’s expansion will have a distinct but reduced impact in all probability. Impact considers the effects of changing the format for Euro 2020 from an environmental perspective.
Benefits
- The tournament being spread out may lead to spectators traveling to the stadium nearest them to attend games instead of having tourists from all over Europe travel to a single country which may be more on the margins geographically. This is further boosted by the draw for the group stages allocating teams that had already qualified for the groups with matches hosted in their countries. Ensuring that host nations will be playing at home should create a low impact situation environmentally.
- Expanding the tournament created a situation where it was more likely to have clusters of teams where fans may not have to travel too far in order to follow their progress. Scotland have not gone to a major tournament since 1998, and now, with how the draw has worked out, could be playing their group stage matches in London with minimal environmental impact.
Drawbacks
- Having the tournament so spread out means that fans who want to follow the entiretyof their team’s run may have to rack up some serious air miles. You could potentially have fans traveling from East to West, moving from the group stages through to the knockouts. The closest two stadia are in London and Amsterdam, which, with the potential lack of advanced planning, would still entail a flight for fans to travel between the two. At worst, you have the potential journey from Dublin to Baku. Most of these journeys will be further than intranational ones in the traditional host model, particularly with the potential crisscrossing.
Callum McPhail Illustration & Page Design by Natasha Phang-Lee - For those from countries who are not hosting group stage matches, you would still have to travel from one country to another even just for those games. A Swiss fan who wants to watch all three group stage matches would have to go from Baku to Rome and back again. These travels are added to by the fact that you also have to include how they are getting to these locations from their home country in the first place. - An expanded tournament means that you are adding in more teams, meaning more travel, with some coming from further away. The playoffs include Georgia, Iceland and Israel, all of whom would create significantly more air miles for fans. Whilst it could work out with nations having closer hosts than in the past, it is still introducing more fans into the equation.
