This pod is 27 minutes. The same duration as a flight taken by a Premier League club in 2023. The thought-provoking study released this week by BBC Sport suggests the average flight time of Premier Clubs around matches in a period between mid-January and mid-March was just 42 minutes. Short-haul domestic flying is rife in football. Everyone's at it. The players enjoy it, the clubs arrange it, the league allows it. Nobody seems to want to make the first move and stand up for the planet. Why not? And it's not...
This pod is 27 minutes. The same duration as a flight taken by a Premier League club in 2023. The thought-provoking study released this week by BBC Sport suggests the average flight time of Premier Clubs around matches in a period between mid-January and mid-March was just 42 minutes. Short-haul domestic flying is rife in football. Everyone's at it. The players enjoy it, the clubs arrange it, the league allows it. Nobody seems to want to make the first move and stand up for the planet. Why not? And it's not just flights to games The BBC research shows planes often fly in as "ghost" arrivals from different locations in the UK in order to chauffeur the teams a short distance away. So will this study, and the debates raised as a result, lead to meaningful action? Jonathan and Melissa discuss with the man who led the research at the BBC; their Editorial Sustainability Lead, Dave Lockwood. Premier League; clubs, players and administrators; it's over to you.
Full time codes:
01:30. Melissa summarises this week's gloomy IPCC report, calling for us all to act before it's too late. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/
02:30. Jonathan re-emphasises the disconnect between this expertise and the blinkered operations of sport.
05:00 Melissa outlines how this isn't just about millionaires on private jet, it's about an industry not set up to make the necessary decisions.
07:00 We introduce Dave Lockwood, Editorial Sustainability Lead at BBC Sport.
07:30. How did Dave start gathering his research? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65017565
10:15. Did the clubs need to confirm the flights Dave had spotted were actually theirs?
12:00. Dave says the responses were mixed but led to frank conversations. Some clubs were extremely open, he says.
13:00 Jonathan agrees that the tone of the research was important; not just finger-pointing at the worst culprits but displaying a collective picture.
14:15. So how can we move forward? What are the issues? Why would clubs want to erase a perceived competitive advantage?
15:45 Melissa reckons players could get more sleep on a luxury coach rather than a fragmented journey using a very short flight.
18:30. Dave gives more detail on the most fascinating part of his research; the proliferation of "positioning flights".
20:00. Jonathan's baffled by the "madness" of a multi-phase, multi-mode journey to an away game.
22:00 Dave goes all rock and roll and envisages electric buses with beds as the future. You can have that for free, PL clubs!
23:00 Melissa spots another problem here. Clubs are reporting their carbon footprints as part of their quests to reach net zero. Did they realise positioning flights were happening and should be included?!
24:00 Dave summarises by talking about where the Premier League may go with this. People know the scale of the problem now, he says.
26:00 Dave says he's not surprised by the numbers. But his non-football-following friend was astounded. It's broken out of the bubble.
26:45 Melissa summarises her position; hoping collective ambition and innovation can help address the problem now we all know this is happening across the board.
27:00. Do we hit the 27 minute deadline? Of course we don't. I mean, we almost do. It's a good effort. It's down to Jonathan's daughter to cut us off.
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