!["[They are] cynically exploiting the power and beauty of sport and it has to stop."](https://www.thecooldown.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-recbnw9My2VJEDOBO.jpg?w=1920&h=800)
South African political satire YouTube channel Politically Aweh took on gas giants in a new video, including details on one company's attempts to use the country's popular rugby team to clean up its image.
According to the Daily Maverick, host KG Mokgadi and writer Angel Campey partnered with Badvertising to point out the efforts of Astron Energy, Sasol, TotalEnergies and Engen to wash away their negative environmental impacts with a liberal application of sport appreciation and support.
"For fossil fuel companies, whose pollution threatens the future of sport, using sponsorship to 'sportswash' their reputations is like tobacco companies sponsoring cancer clinics — these deals that pretend to be friendly are really smokescreens allowing harm to continue," Badvertising's Andrew Simms said. "... With air pollution from fossil fuels alone killing between five and eight million people a year, it's time to kick major polluters out of sports such as football and rugby and stop them from exploiting games to launder their reputations."
The video highlights Engen's relationship to the South African Springboks rugby team and its sponsorship of marathons in South Africa as particular points of hypocrisy.
Covering a company's less-than-ethical environmental reputation with sports sponsorship is nothing new, but the practice is finally starting to come under fire from an environmentally conscious public.
A South American cricket tournament has caught heat for accepting a sponsorship deal with ExxonMobil, while the New Weather Institute found 200 companies currently sponsoring sports teams, leagues, or events in an apparent effort to distract from their profound environmental impact. Even FIFA, soccer's global governing body, has come under fire for a $100 million contract with oil giants Aramco.
But, as Politically Aweh points out, athletes are also joining the push against such sponsorship deals. They highlight British Olympic gold medalist Etienne Stott's comments to them in their video.
"Fossil fuel lobbyists [are] cynically exploiting the power and beauty of sport and it has to stop," Stott said. "Anyone who cares about sport — its fans and its participants — and in fact life itself, should be calling out greenwashing. We need to kick out fossil money from sport, and it needs to happen today."
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