Every summer, as soon as the last competitive ball is kicked, football turns into a glossy travelling circus. Clubs criss-cross the globe in search of broadcast exposure, commercial partnerships and, increasingly, the kind of international branding that even mega-corps like Amazon and Google might think was a bit much.
The modern pre-season tour has become a pillar of elite football’s economy. Yet as the miles stretch further, the environmental cost grows heavier. The contradiction is now impossible to ignore: the sport’s most aggressively globalised tradition is also one of its biggest carbon headaches.
The distances involved are staggering. Manchester United‘s 2023 tour, for example, included stops in Edinburgh, Oslo, New Jersey, San Diego, Houston and Las Vegas. According to publicly available flight data for comparable routes, such a journey easily exceeds 20,000 kilometres of air travel. Long-haul flights remain one of football’s most carbon-intensive activities, with aviation consistently identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a major emissions source.
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United are hardly alone. Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool regularly venture to the United States. Spurs and Newcastle visited Australia barely minutes after the 2023-24 season finished, a single trip that – based on standard aviation emissions calculations for London-Melbourne return flights – produced several tonnes of CO₂ per person, before factoring in staff, equipment and internal travel.
Clubs argue, often fairly, that these tours are commercial imperatives. The Premier League’s overseas broadcasting deals now dwarf domestic packages and international fan engagement translates directly into revenue. There is also a strategic logic: the United States and Southeast Asia are enormous growth markets. As long as sponsors and rights-holders prioritise global visibility, clubs will feel compelled to keep hopping across continents. Put simply, the machine pays too well to slow down.
But the climate reality is moving faster than football’s commercial model. The United Nations Environment Programme has repeatedly highlighted the disproportionate emissions from international sport travel, while UEFA and FIFA’s own sustainability reports acknowledge travel as the single largest contributor to tournament footprints. The contradiction is baked into the structure of elite football. Clubs publicly commit to net-zero strategies, yet continue participating in a pre-season system designed to maximise miles, not minimise emissions.
Some clubs are beginning to take tentative steps toward a different model. Brighton & Hove Albion have opted for more Europe-based pre-seasons in recent years, reducing long-haul flights while still accessing competitive opponents. Brentford have explored hybrid approaches, mixing local training camps with short-haul travel. FC Copenhagen, one of the more progressive clubs in Scandinavia, have publicly discussed avoiding unnecessary long-distance travel outside major competitions. These decisions are often framed as performance-oriented – shorter travel equals better recovery – but the environmental benefits are obvious.
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A handful of clubs have experimented with centralised training hubs, a concept borrowed from American sports. Instead of flying from city to city for friendlies, teams gather in a single region or country, reducing the number of long-haul flights required. It is not a perfect solution, but it is measurably better than zig-zagging across continents. Another emerging idea is the “festival” model: several clubs gathering in one location for a mini-tournament, cutting down on both miles and logistical complexity. The Premier League Summer Series in the United States has even inadvertently demonstrated this, grouping fixtures within a relatively contained region to reduce internal travel.
The conversation is also shifting at governing-body level. UEFA’s 2030 environmental strategy stresses travel reduction and more efficient scheduling, though it stops short of regulating club tours. FIFA have commissioned sustainability studies for the expanded Club World Cup, which itself required enormous global travel. For all the talk of responsibility, binding restrictions remain rare. Football seldom limits what boosts revenue.
The science, however, is unequivocal. Aviation emissions are among the most damaging forms of climate impact and long-haul flights generate significantly more CO₂ per passenger-kilometre than most other forms of transport. While clubs often offset flights through tree-planting schemes or certified credits, many climate researchers argue that offsets cannot substitute genuine emissions reductions. The most effective solution remains the simplest: fly less.
This is where football’s commercial priorities clash with its environmental aspirations. Clubs promote recycled kits, solar panels, electric mowers and waste-reduction drives – programmes that are valuable, genuine and necessary. But none of them match the scale of emissions produced by a two-week global tour involving tens of thousands of kilometres in the air. It is the sustainability equivalent of bragging about reusable water bottles while taking a private jet to work.
Still, this issue is not unsolvable. Football has reinvented itself before, sometimes dramatically, when commercial logic demanded it. The same machinery that built pre-season tours into a global brand vehicle could just as easily retool them into a lower-carbon model – if governing bodies, sponsors and clubs decide the reputational upside is worth it. As climate expectations tighten across every sector, that moment may be coming sooner than football anticipates.
Until then, the sport’s most glamorous summer ritual remains one of its dirtiest secrets. The crowds, the content and the commercial gains will continue, but the climate cost will grow heavier each year.
In an era when football increasingly markets itself as a vehicle for social betterment, its love affair with long-haul summer travel remains the one area in which the industry most clearly refuses to look in the mirror.
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