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A total of 11 White Papers have been produced, clustered into four themes referring to key stakeholder groups. These White Papers aim to present the latest thinking, practice, and debate in relation to key human rights issues involved in the planning, construction, delivery, and legacy of MSEs. Each paper also considers the case for, and potential role of, an independent centre of expertise on MSEs and human rights.

Human rights groups have for some years lobbied sponsors to bring about human rights improvements in the context of mega-sporting events (MSE) – from Beijing and London, through to Sochi and Rio. This is based in part on a belief that their investment in the process puts them in a position to exert significant influence and leverage over host governments, sports governing bodies (SGB), and others involved in the planning and staging of an MSE.

This White Paper explores the state of human rights as it relates to the sponsor-MSE relationship. It considers the history, models and mechanics of MSE sponsorship first, before reviewing the human rights risks traditionally posed by or involving MSE sponsors.

At the local event level, local sponsors may in some instances be vetted by SGB’s locallevel entities (for example, local organising committees, national Olympic committees).
On the other hand, international sponsors are not typically subject to due diligence by local SBG entities, as their partnership deals are agreed at the international level with the SGB directly.

At the international sponsor level, while the process of SGB due diligence on sponsors is not entirely new, it is unclear what due diligence SGBs carry out to ensure their standards are met, how they determine what is deemed to conflict with their values, and whether human rights considerations are taken into account. It would be noteworthy if a SGB undertook explicit human rights due diligence on sponsors beyond the area of products/goods suppliers and license holders. Given global sponsors are not procured through open tenders (instead, typically through bilateral negotiation), greater transparency is needed to ensure that adequate human rights vetting does occur in the future and where appropriate that it is aligned with the due diligence undertaken for local sponsors.

On the flip side, while the majority of global Olympic and FIFA sponsors already have a human rights policy that explicitly commits to respecting human rights, the process of implementing these commitments in the MSE context through systematic human rights due diligence on the SGB is less common.

Sponsors report that their due diligence in an MSE context occurs more often at the local level, when local business units need to understand the associated risks and mitigations of upcoming events. However, the reality is that by this time the event has already been awarded, their due diligence plays no role in influencing the decision of where to host or any aspect of the conditions, including on human rights terms, between sports bodies and the LOC/NOC.

Sponsors maintain they hold the greatest leverage over the activities of the SGB/MSE (the rights holders) at the point of negotiation, before the sponsor relationship has been formalised. Once signed, sponsors indicate they have far less scope to make new demands or raise new expectations. This is largely due to the fact that they are dealing with a monopolistic rights seller, and competing with a range of other potential sponsors. Tied to this, sponsors indicated this leverage does not extend itself to influence over the host city; sponsors’ leverage is primarily with the rights holder alone, which is one step removed from the host entity.

In using their influence and leverage, it is clear that rather than publicly intervene in an alleged human rights issue related to an MSE (but not necessarily related to the sponsor’s products, operations or activities), sponsors prefer to act ‘behind the scenes’.

This typically takes the form of serving as sounding boards for dilemma situations and providing insights and guidance to SGB, LOCs, NOCs, and others involved in MSE delivery. Similarly, rather than developing extensive networks with the government, NGOs, and others locally, sponsors have generally sought to develop the capacity of the NOC or LOC to do this.
Some sponsors believe there is much more that SGBs can and should do ‘upstream’ to ensure that human rights is an integral part of the tendering, sport-listing, and awarding process – so that commitments are made by host governments/cities and LOCs from the start. This creates a business case for sponsors to concentrate their human rights due diligence and leverage efforts during the negotiation phase, and upon the pre-bid, bidding, short-listing and awarding processes. There is a clear hope by sponsors that SGBs will introduce human rights fully into future bidding processes, a clear area where sponsors can already begin to exert their influence. Once introduced, such commitments also create fertile ground for leveraging progress on practical implementation.

In addition, in recent years the nature of sponsorship has been changing: relationships between sponsors and SGB are becoming longer and more bespoke to specific product categories; some of the traditional boundaries between sponsorship, advertising, and broadcasting are breaking down with the on-line marketing sphere becoming increasingly dominant; and as MSEs become more and more global so too will sponsorship portfolios. How these developments may influence the nature of sponsor leverage over the human rights impacts of an MSE must be closely watched and anticipated.
To date, and in the path of the high expectations placed upon them by campaigners and the media, individual sponsors have tended to act alone on human rights in the MSE context. Yet given the apparent low state of sponsor leverage and existing due diligence over human rights issues in the MSE context, sponsors have struggled to protect the reputation of the franchise when faced with social risks over which they have little or no direct control.

This creates a case and opportunity for greater collective action between sponsors in order to build leverage, and also to work with other stakeholders to embed human rights into the DNA of the sponsor relationship. Multi-stakeholder approaches can help develop consensus around a number of pressing questions for sponsors in relation to MSEs and human rights, including: determining the most salient human rights issues within the MSE context, as well as rubric for determining their level of involvement in potential impacts; how to best prioritise their due diligence efforts; and, the appropriate role of an MSE sponsor in providing access to effective remedies, amongst others.
The sponsors that participated in interviews for this white paper all believe that this might be best facilitated through a new, independent, and permanent centre, platform, or mechanism that can establish multi-stakeholder trust and maintain focus over the years of implementation ahead.

This paper focuses mainly on IOC and FIFA sponsor relationships, although it is recognised that sponsorship is also a significant driver for other international events (such as tennis, Formula One, rugby, and cricket, amongst others) and in professional sport at the national level (e.g. baseball, football, basketball or ice hockey in the context of North America).
Four major international sponsors provided input for this paper. In addition, reviews of the limited number of written sources on the sponsor-MSE-human rights relationship have been reviewed and reflected. As such, this paper cannot be considered to be representative of all MSE sponsor views globally.

The FIFA World Cup™ is an international football competition for the senior men’s national teams of FIFA’s member associations that takes place every four years. Its popularity is truly global, bringing excitement to communities around the world and uniting people from different backgrounds through the common language of football. The next FIFA World Cup will take place in the Russian Federation from 14 June to 15 July 2018.

Staging the tournament entails transporting millions of people to the matches and fan fests, ensuring their health and safety, dealing with waste in the stadiums, recruiting and training thousands of volunteers, providing an event that is accessible for everyone and broadcasting the matches in over 200 countries.
This scale inevitably has an impact on society, the environment and the climate.

As the organisers of this mega-event, FIFA and the Local Organising Committee are committed to protecting and conserving the environment. One important part of understanding the environmental impact is to understand the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the preparation and staging of the competition. For this purpose, FIFA and the LOC teamed up with experts to estimate the projected GHG emissions resulting from the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

The GHG accounting and reporting procedure used for this report is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the most widely used international accounting tool for government and business leaders to understand, quantify and manage greenhouse gas emissions.

A "Green Event" is defined as an environmentally sound and sustainable implementation of events. Energy efficiency, waste management, local economy, and social responsibility are among the central issues. Small and large events can contribute significantly contribute to environmental protection. Public and media events play a big role in the education process because they draw the interest of a large number of people to actively participate in environmental protection.