Travel distances in amateur football and handball in Germany

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3309374/v1

Download PDF

Research Article

Travel distances in amateur football and handball in Germany

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3309374/v1

This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

Version 1

posted

You are reading this latest preprint version

Background

Humanity faces dual existential crises of biodiversity loss and global warming. Acknowledging the environmental impact of sports, the United Nations calls for the sports sector to lead in fighting climate change and adopting climate-neutral practices. To this point, research on greenhouse gas emissions of amateur league play remains scarce.

Methods

Travel distances for the 2022/23 season of play for 339 football and handball amateur teams playing in different leagues in Bavaria were calculated. The program Gurobi was utilised to optimise how teams are placed in groups in order to allow for shorter travel distances.

Results

The study showed that playing in a higher amateur league resulted most often in longer travel distances in both sports for women’s and men’s leagues. Some amateur teams had to travel up to 2,958 kilometres for one season of play. Optimising in which groups teams play reduces overall travel distances by up to 19.7%.

Conclusions

Our findings indicate that travel distances in amateur football and handball, though smaller than those of professional teams, are still significant. Given the larger number of amateur teams and the imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is crucial to explore ways of reducing travel in amateur sports. Optimising how teams are placed in groups could be an initial step towards a substantial reduction in travel emissions from amateur sports.

amateur sport

climate change

planetary health

travel distances

Humanity faces the dual existential crisis of loss of biodiversity and global warming. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has called for individual and collective actions for transformative change to save our natural world (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 2019). At the same time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states the urgency to minimize potentially catastrophic global warming (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022). Despite the Paris Agreement goal of staying well below 2°C (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2016), current practice is contributing to reaching 3°C by the end of this century (United Nations Environment Programme, 2020). From a public health perspective, such bleak prospects put millions of human lives at risk (Hamilton et al., 2021).

Even though regular physical activity provides a number of important and undisputed health benefits (2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2018), it is also increasingly recognized that certain types of physical activity can also have negative impacts on the environment. For example, the Olympic Summer Games 2020 in Tokyo were estimated to have produced 3 million tons of CO₂, even though most international visitors were banned due to the Covid-19 pandemic (The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olycmpic and Paralympic Games, 2022). FIFA has estimated that the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar produced 3.6 million tons of carbon emissions (Fédération Internationale de Football Association, 2021). However, an independent report has put this figure much higher (Dufrasne et al., 2022). Additionally, in North American professional sport leagues, such as the National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Football League (NFL), high carbon emissions due to team travel have been confirmed (Wynes, 2021).

Acknowledging the detrimental effects that sport can have on the environment, the United Nations has urged the sports sector to adopt an exemplary role in fighting climate change and to use its large audience to inspire others to action (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992). This includes creating climate neutral sporting events, regardless of size. At the professional level, some sport federations have responded to such calls and introduced strategies to reduce their environmental footprint, e.g. Premier League (Premier League, 2021). For example, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) released ‘Agenda 21’, which intends to minimize energy consumption, protect conservation areas, and reduce the carbon footprint of sports facilities for members of the Olympic Movement (International Olympic Committee, 1999).

Compared to professional sport, to our knowledge, few studies have investigated the climate impact of grassroot level sports. Wicker (2019) investigated the Scope 1 emissions (Pandey et al., 2011) of individual sport participants in Germany. Wicker’s results indicate that a person participating for one year in recreational golf will emit an average of 2.2 t/CO₂, and in surfing an average of 2.1 t/CO₂. Recreational sports with lower estimated CO₂ emissions were tennis and joining a gym (both 0.2 t/CO₂). Additionally, the negative impacts of alpine skiing on the environment are well described (Roux-Fouillet et al., 2011). Negative environmental impacts are also generated by sport facilities such as swimming pools, which have shown to be resource and energy intensive (Gallion et al., 2014). Beyond professional sport, grassroots sports have been recognized by the European Union (EU) as important for reducing carbon emission. Thus, the SHARE initiative intends to support sport organizations in transitioning to a more sustainable future (European Commission, 2022).

Based on such plans and the urgency to reduce carbon emissions, surprisingly, little is currently known about the greenhouse gas emissions caused by travel within recreational league play. Due to its popularity and the considerable number of teams and players in different leagues, such knowledge is valuable in describing emission patterns and potentially identifying levers for reducing emissions. This study intends to address this gap and describes travel distances and carbon emissions caused by amateur league play in different men’s and women’s football and handball leagues in Germany.

The study focuses on amateur team sports. Football and handball were chosen for the analysis as two of the most popular team sports in Germany. (Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund e.V., 2021). In football, more than 24,000 clubs are organized within the German Soccer Confederation (Deutscher Fußball-Bund e.V., 2023), in handball there are 4.200 clubs (Deutscher Handballbund e.V., 2023), with the vast majority of clubs and teams playing on an amateur level.

Figure 1 shows how amateur league play in both sports is organised in Bavaria, Germany. Leagues represent different levels of play, with teams pIaying in the Kreisklasse, or Bezirksklasse having the lowest level of play. Due to the high number of teams playing the sport, lower leagues are organized in separate groups. These groups determine which other teams play against each other during the season in the double round robin format. The groups are organized by the state-level federations, potentially based on teams' geographical location.

For both sports, the analysis included one amateur league per level in Bavaria for women and men, from the lowest league (B-Klasse/Kreisklasse for football, Bezirksklasse for handball) to the highest (Landesliga for football, Bayernliga for handball).

Explorative nature of the study

Several negative environmental impacts of football and handball could be investigated. This includes energy consumed by heating/cooling of gyms (handball), water usage to maintain football pitches (football), travel to team practices, and equipment and clothing used. This study is explorative in nature and only focused on the travel to regular season league games.

The study investigated the following questions:

How far is the travel distance of football and handball amateur sports teams to “away” games during the regular season?

How does the level of the amateur league influence travel distances in the two sports?

Does the current spatial distribution of groups offer potential for reducing travel distances?

Data collection and analysis

Travel distances were calculated for each league level (see Fig. 1). If league included more than one group, two groups were chosen randomly for the analysis. Data on leagues, groups, and regular season schedules for the 2022/2023 season were extracted manually from the official websites of the sport federations (bfv.de [Bayerischer Fußball-Verband] and bhv-online.de [Bayerischer Handballverband]). Teams’ addresses were then converted into geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) using the Python interface of the Google Maps API (Google, 2023) and car distances and duration were computed using the Python interface of the Geoapify API (Geoapify, 2023). The coordinates were then displayed on a map using Mapbox GL Javascript (Mapbox, 2023) and manually checked for potential large errors.

Four men's football groups from the Erlangen A League and two women's handball groups from the Landesliga were selected to simulate optimised travelling distances. In each case, travel distances were first calculated based on the current distribution of teams by group. In a second step, the best possible solution that would lead to the shortest possible travel distances was calculated using Gurobi (Gurobi Optimization, 2023). Original and optimized distances were compared to identify differences.

Description of team travel in the 2022/23 season

The following section describes the travel distances for the different amateur football and handball leagues. In total, 8 women's football and 10 handball groups and 12 men's football and 10 handball groups were included in the analysis, with a total of 159 women's teams and 180 men's teams (Table 1).

Table 1

Total travel distances for the 2022/23 season of play in different amateur football and handball leagues.
League	Group	Number of teams	Mean travel distance by team	Total distance travelled by group
Football
Men		180
B-Klasse	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund 1	14	459.12	6427.82
	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund 2	14	374.1	5237.28
A-Klasse	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund 1	12	419.76	5037.06
	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund 2	13	374.5	4868.54
Kreisklasse	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund 1	13	387.7	5039.98
	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund 2	14	277.5	3884.94
Kreisliga	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund 1	16	620.24	9923.88
	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund 2	16	791.88	12669.92
Bezirksliga	Mittelfranken Nord	16	868.78	13900.34
	Mittelfranken Süd	16	1847.14	29554.18
Landesliga	Bayern Mitte	18	2729.88	49137.86
	Bayern Südwest	18	2957.8	53240.24
Women		88
Kreisklasse	01 Erlangen Pegnitzgrund	9	315.46	2839.06
	02 Erlangen Pegnitzgrund	9	430.4	3873.68
Kreisliga	Erlangen Pegnitzgrund	11	681.26	7493.96
Bezirksliga	01 Mittelfranken	12	768.62	9223.42
	02 Mittelfranken	11	680.12	7481.22
Bezirksoberliga	Mittelfranken	12	1367.36	16408.36
Landesliga	Nord Bayern	12	2254.3	27051.64
	Süd Bayern	12	3131	37571.98
Handball
Men		78
Bezirksklasse	Mittelfranken 1	7	189.96	1329.74
	Mittelfranken 2	8	128.14	1025.1
Bezirksliga	Mittelfranken 1	6	481.98	2891.92
	Mittelfranken 2	6	375.98	2255.84
Bezirksoberliga	Mittelfranken 1	6	384.5	2307.02
	Mittelfranken 2	5	333	1664.96
Landesliga	Nord	12	2314.48	27773.88
	Süd	12	2266.98	27203.72
Bayernliga	Nord	8	1767.24	14137.92
	Süd	8	1060.28	8482.26
Women		71
Bezirksklasse	Staffel 1 Mittelfranken	5	110.76	553.78
	Staffel 2 Mittelfranken	6	399.6	2397.66
Bezirksliga	Staffel 1 Mittelfranken	5	371.34	1856,.7
	Staffel 2 Mittelfranken	5	152.56	762.86
Bezirksoberliga	Staffel 1 Mittelfranken	6	282.32	1693.96
	Staffel 2 Mittelfranken	5	409.68	2048.44
Landesliga	Staffel Nord	12	2195.68	26348.1
	Staffel Süd	12	1697.56	20370.74
Bayernliga	Staffel Nord	7	1083.46	7584.2
	Staffel Süd	8	1334.6	10676.88
Note: Travel distances calculated are round-trip for one season of play in the double round-robin format.

The average distance travelled by each team during the 2022/23 season is shown in Fig. 2 for the different leagues. Playing in a higher recreational league resulted in higher travel distances in both sports and in both women's and men's leagues.

Original and optimized spatial distribution of groups

This section maps the spatial distribution of one league of Football (men) and one league of Handball (women) for the 2022/23 season. Additionally, an optimization for the spatial distribution is presented.

Figure 3 shows the spatial distribution for the four groups of men’s Football playing in the A-Klasse league in the Erlangen region. According to the original 2022/23 season schedule, all teams combined had to travel 18,957 km to games. Optimizing how teams are grouped to minimize travel distances would have resulted in combined travel of 15,227 km, a reduction of 3,730 km (19.7%).

Figure 4 shows the spatial distribution for two groups of women’s Handball playing in the Landesliga. In the 2022/23 season, all teams combined travelled 46,719 km to attend regular season games. The optimized solution intended to minimize travel distances places one additional team in the southern group. This results in more games being played for this group (156 instead of 132 games). Nevertheless, the combined travel would be 42,762 km, a reduction of 3,957 km (8.5%).

Summary of main findings

The investigation of travel distances to games in women’s and men’s amateur football and handball in Germany yielded some key findings. For football, a clear pattern emerged, indicating that the higher the level of league play is, the farther teams travel to away matches. For handball, this pattern was less clear, but in the two higher leagues’ teams still travelled longest distances to away games compared to the lower leagues. Across various levels of play for women’s and men’s teams in one season, football teams on average had to travel 277 to 3,131 km to away games and handball teams had to travel 111 to 2,314km. The explorative spatial mapping of teams indicated that not all teams are optimally paired in groups, potentially causing unnecessarily long travel distances for teams.

To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies assessing travel distances to away games in amateur sport. The total amount of travel we observed for some teams (e.g., 2,958 km per season for Men’s Football Landesliga Bayern Südwest), raises questions on the sustainability of amateur league play. The carbon footprint for travelling 2,958 km with one (combustion engine) car is 592.1 kg/CO₂ (the equivalent for an electric vehicle is 403.2 kg/CO₂) (Quarks, 2023), and it is safe to assume that many amateur teams will not have mini-buses and will travel with 3 or more private cars. This figure excludes all other travel that players might do to join practices, home games, or meeting other players to carpool. Transport emissions are insofar relevant, as they contribute globally to 16.2% of total greenhouse gas emissions (2016). In Europe, this rate is 25.9% (2019) (Ritchie et al., 2020), and greenhouse gas emissions caused by transport have increased in Europe by 33% from 1990 to and 2019(European Environment Agency, 2022).

Ethical issues of reducing the carbon footprint of amateur league play

These findings raise important ethical questions. For one, how much carbon emission can amateur league play afford in the future? To this point, amateur sport and exercise is strongly encouraged by public health experts, due to its many benefits on individual health(2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2018). However, if the negative impacts of sport and exercise on the environment are considered, a more nuanced picture emerges. Some recreational sport and exercise cause comparably high greenhouse gas emissions, thus pairing individual health benefits with planetary harm. The question on how to equate the two is largely unanswered. In the future, answering this question will become highly relevant. Is it advisable that a person travels 20 km by car roundtrip, causing 4 kg/CO₂ to engage in one hour of brisk walking in a local park? As of today, we simply do not know.

Shue (1993) distinguishes between subsistence and luxury emissions. Subsistence emissions are those caused to secure the livelihood of people (e.g., a family in a low-income nation burning wood or coal to cook). Luxury emissions, in contrast, are defined as not being tied to the livelihood of people (e.g., driving around in a sports car for pleasure). Shue (1993) advises that luxury emissions are the ones that must be cut first. Utilizing this distinction, at what point is the participation in sport and exercise an act of subsistence, and at what point one of luxury?

Another important ethical issue is, should the amateur play in football and handball be limited to reduce carbon emissions, if professional Football and Handball players cause so much more emissions? For example, a male premier league football team emits 56,700 kg of CO₂ per season just for travel (Pereira et al., 2019), this is about 100 to 150 times more than the average team we investigated. Should the Premier League teams not be the first to cut their emissions? However, this argument of climate justice may be countered by the argument that there are many more recreational football teams and that their total emissions might ultimately be comparable to the ones of professional teams.

Implications of findings – optimising the spatial distribution of groups or changing game formats

Besides posing difficult ethical issues, the results also hint towards straightforward ways to reduce emissions. Figures 3 and 4 show that some teams are placed in groups that seem to result in unnecessarily long travel distances Simply placing these teams in another group would greatly reduce their travel, and thus the carbon footprint caused by amateur play. For example, re-organising Men’s A-Klasse Football groups (Fig. 3) would result in cutting travel by 3,730 km, or almost 20% with the additional benefits of cutting travel times and money saved on gasoline.

Obviously, beyond such re-organising of groups, another way to limit travel would be to reconsider the game format. All teams investigated played the double round robin format where one game is played per match day. Either switching to a tournament style season, modifying the round-robin design or decreasing the number of games per season would result in shorter travel distances.

Limitations of our study

The study has certain limitation that should be considered when interpreting the results of the study and to acknowledge the potential impact they may have on the reliability and generalizability of the findings. The findings of the study may not be representative of the entire league since only some groups per league were analysed. The calculation methods employed in the study were solely theoretical, without consulting the teams on their travel preferences, the results show only general tendencies and real travel distances might change based on day and time of travel.

Few studies have investigated the travel distances in amateur sport. Our results indicate that these distances, while only a fraction of those accumulated by some professional teams, are substantial. Considering that there are many more amateur teams than professional teams, and the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, potential ways of reducing travel in amateur sports should be explored. Results suggest that an optimisation of the grouping of teams playing in double round-robin formats could be a first step to significantly reduce travel emissions from amateur sport.

Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee. (2018). 2018 Physical Activity Advisory Committee Scientific Report. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Deutscher Fußball-Bund e.V. (2023). Mitglieder Statistik. In. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Deutscher Fußball-Bund e.V.
Deutscher Handballbund e.V. (2023). Faszination Handball. Deutscher Handballbund e.V. https://www.dhb.de/de/verband/ueber-uns/faszination-handball/
Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund e.V. (2021). Bestandserhebung 2021.
Dufrasne, G., Crook, J., & Rao, D. (2022). Poor tackling: Yellow card for 2022 FIFA World Cup's carbon neutrality claim. In Why the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Quatar is not on track for carbon neutrality: Carbon Market Watch.
European Commission. (2022). The SHARE Initiative - explained. Retrieved 28.07.2023 from https://sport.ec.europa.eu/policies/sport-and-economy/share-initiative
European Environment Agency. (2022). Transport and environment report 2022. Digitalisation in the mobility system: challenges and opportunities. https://www.eea.europa.eu/ds_resolveuid/32ddca81444147fdb729523b3a98fe91
Fédération Internationale de Football Association. (2021). FIFA World Cup 2022. Greenhouse gas accounting report. https://www.qatar2022.qa/sites/default/files/2022-08/greenhouse-gas-accounting-report-en.pdf
Gallion, T., Harrison, T., Hulverson, R., & Hristovski, K. (2014). Estimating Water Energy and Carbon Footprints of Residential Swimming Pools. Water Reclamation and Sustainability, 2014, 343–359. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-411645-0.00014-6
Geoapify. (2023). Welcome to Geoapify Location Platform. Retrieved 07.08.2023 from https://www.geoapify.com
Google. (2023). Google Maps Platform. Retrieved 07.08.2023 from https://mapsplatform.google.com
Gurobi Optimization. (2023). Decision Intelligence, Across the Enterprise. Retrieved 07.08.2023 from https://www.gurobi.com
Hamilton, I., Kennard, H., McGushin, A., Höglund-Isaksson, L., Kiesewetter, G., Lott, M., Milner, J., Purohit, P., Rafaj, P., Sharma, R., Springmann, M., Woodcock, J., & Watts, N. (2021). The public health implications of the Paris Agreement: a modelling study. Lancet Planet Health, 5, e74-83. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30249-7
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2022). Global warming of 1.5°C. In An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. (2019). Summary for policymakers of the IPBES global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services. I. secretariat.
International Olympic Committee. (1999). Olympic Movement's AGENDA 21 (Sport for sustainable development, Issue.
Mapbox. (2023). API Reference. Retrieved 07.08.2023 from https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/api/
Pandey, D., Agrawal, M., & Pandey, J. S. (2011). Carbon footprint: current methods of estimation. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 178, 135–160. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-010-1678-y
Pereira, R. P. T., Filimonau, V., & Ribeiro, G. M. (2019). Score a goal for climate: Assessing the carbon footprint of travel patterns of the English Premier League clubs. Journal of Cleaner Production, 227, 167–177. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.04.138
Premier League. (2021). League commits to UN Sports for Climate Action Framework. https://www.premierleague.com/news/2327983
Quarks. (2023). CO2-Rechner für Auto, Flugzeug und Co. https://www.quarks.de/umwelt/klimawandel/co2-rechner-fuer-auto-flugzeug-und-co/
Ritchie, H., Roser, M., & Rosado, P. (2020). CO2 and Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Retrieved 07.08.2023 from https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Roux-Fouillet, P., Wipf, S., & Rixen, C. (2011). Long-term impacts of ski piste management on alpine vegetation and soils. Journal of Applied Ecology, 48, 906–915. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20870017
Shue, H. (1993). Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions. Law & Policy, 15(1), 39–60. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9930.1993.tb00093.x
The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olycmpic and Paralympic Games. (2022). Tokyo 2020 Official Report. In: The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olycmpic and Paralympic Games.
United Nations Environment Programme. (2020). Emissions Gap Report 2020. In. Nairobi, Kenya.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (1992). Sports for Climate Action Framework. In. Bonn, Germany: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (2016). The paris agreement. Retrieved 28.07.2023 from https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/parisagreement_publication.pdf
Wicker, P. (2019). The carbon footprint of active sport participants. Sport Management Review, 22, 513–526. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smr.2018.07.001
Wynes, S. (2021). COVID-19 Disruption Demonstrates Win-Win Climate Solutions for Major League Sports. Environ Sci Technol, 55(23), 15609–15615. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c03422

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Download PDF

Version 1

posted

You are reading this latest preprint version

Travel distances in amateur football and handball in Germany

Status:

Version 1

Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Figures

Introduction

Methods

Explorative nature of the study

Data collection and analysis

Results

Description of team travel in the 2022/23 season

Original and optimized spatial distribution of groups

Discussion

Summary of main findings

Ethical issues of reducing the carbon footprint of amateur league play

Implications of findings – optimising the spatial distribution of groups or changing game formats

Limitations of our study

Conclusion

References

Declarations

Status:

Version 1