Your Green Game Playbook
How to Engage Fans in Sustainability on Game Day
A Green Game – a fan engagement game-day activation – is “more than a theme night,” says Andrea Poveda , Senior Sustainability Impact Manager of Honeycomb Strategies. It’s a chance to showcase your team and venue’s commitments to environmentalism and community engagement, test new ideas, and excite your fan base to get involved.
In a recent webinar hosted by Green Sports Alliance (GSA), Andrea moderated a discussion between three specialists who have hosted Green Games: Heidi Mallin (Indiana Convention Center & Lucas Oil Stadium (ICCLOS)), Maurio Batts (Memphis Grizzlies & FedEx Forum), and Courtney Mueller (St. Louis CITY SC & Energizer Park).
Below are key takeaways from that conversation, along with a free resource to help you bring your own Green Game to life. The Green Game Playbook offers actionable steps, creative ideas, and planning tools to get started.
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Top Takeaways
Obtain sponsorship to make fan education interactive and cover Green Game costs.
Bonus: a sponsorship will help prioritize sustainability messaging on stadium media boards!
Fashion distinct branding for Green Games and sustainability initiatives that drive home messaging
Focus on internal communication for the best results
Respond genuinely to fan input and be creative about reaching them
Think about sustainability holistically as a community engagement tool
Heidi Mallin on the Importance of Sponsorship and Community
For their second annual Green Game, Heidi and ICCLOS planned a weekend-long activation to celebrate their sustainability initiatives, with a focus on responsible waste.
The big push for their Green Games is recycling. While regionally there are no laws mandating recycling, ICCLOS facilities prioritize it and feel a responsibility to help educate their fans. As a hub for community members and regional visitors, ICCLOS hopes to spread the word throughout the region to be a steward of a more eco-friendly community.
Their current partnership with Coca Cola is the bedrock for their game-day Green Game activations in Touchdown Town, their tailgating zone. Coca Cola provides sustainability games like a recycling sorting competition, where fans compete against each other to sort different types of bottles and cans. In addition, Coca Cola provides transparent ClearStream recycling bags to collect the ample bottle and can waste from pre-show merriment. The donated bags increase (literal) visibility of the quantities of recyclables from the games, supporting ICCLOS’ focus on awareness.
Learn more about the benefits of Sustainability Sponsorship
In addition to their tailgate fun, the weekend included a drive-thru e-recycling day, where fans could drop off old electronics and be greeted with the Colts Cheerleaders and pick up swag. The experience helps position sustainability as part of the fan experience; it’s another way to get hyped up for the team, to express your support for the city and the efforts of their favorite sports franchise to be a responsible community partner.
Maurio Batts on the Team Planning and Preparation
By the time Maurio started planning his first Grizzlies Green Game, a lot of game-day themes had already been chosen, and a lot of his internal team didn’t have the sustainability education to understand the importance of what he was proposing.
But he was persistent, staying in touch with the community impact team to see what they could make work. They ended up pairing their Green Game with their HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) night for a dual focus.
Memphis Grizzlies logo
Because of their short turnaround time, the Grizzlies focused on fan messaging: they ran sustainability tips on the jumbotron during timeouts, and the Game Presentation Team performed a skit on recyclable versus landfill products commonly sold at concessions. Fans also left with a Grizzlies coaster made from recycled cork as a memento.
Maurio is way ahead of the game to level up for next year. Through constant communication with the Community Investment Team, they are on track to make big improvements to this year's Green Game: they’ve branded their sustainability efforts to make them stand out, scheduled the standalone event in advance, secured Coca Cola as a sponsor, and are crafting meaningful giveaways and games for the big day itself.
Maurio’s persistent communication goes to show that internal cooperation is essential to engaging fans and the community in sustainability.
Courtney Mueller on Engagement Strategies
St. Louis SC’s branded and sponsor-supported sustainability initiatives demonstrate their dedication to sustainability year round.
St. Louis SC sees a Green Game as an important chance to celebrate fans, showing them how crucial they are in year-round sustainability efforts. She says it’s a chance to tell them: “this is how you contribute every single time you're at a match to the overall goals… these are our sustainability goals [and] it's important to us as a stadium.”
Courtney and her team use a diverse set of strategies to reach out to fans about sustainability. They send surveys, host a fan pledge, conduct tours and media coverage in back-of-house waste sorting areas for visibility, and create educational content that fans really want to interact with. They engage athletes, key staff, and local influencers to participate in their content, so it has both broad fan appeal and the authenticity of the team’s deep commitment. They also think about sustainability holistically, positioning circularity as a chance to highlight shopping and eating locally, how to sight-see or get around the city easily, and showing sustainability goes beyond energy and trash numbers.
In fact, St. Louis SC has a huge focus on giving back to the St. Louis community, and the sustainability component of that is integrated into the strategy. When a tornado struck the region in May of this year, residents began feeling personally affected by extreme weather – a direct result of climate change – in a way they hadn’t felt before. St. Louis SC is reacting to their fan sentiments with education about energy use and transportation alternatives, and the steps they’re taking to reduce and mitigate harmful impacts. It has become a personal issue for this community, and the commitment to shine awareness and take action has become paramount for St. Louis SC.
Final Thoughts
These three teams and venues demonstrate that game day activations can take many different forms and still be effective and fun. Take a look at our playbook for more ideas on how you could bring one to life with your venue or team, and get started!
Read Also: KEEPING PACE WITH SUSTAINABLE SPORTS TRENDS IN 2025