Final Conference Presented at Sport Positive Summit 2025
On 8th October 2025 in London, the final conference of FREE KICKS* was hosted during Sport Positive Summit 2025. Being open to over 500 on-site attendees and more via live-stream, it brought together the partners of FREE KICKS, as well as EU officials. The conference presented the achievements and key takeaways from the project to sport and football attendees to encourage progress on sustainability in the sport sector.
The conference was opened by researcher Alessio Novi of S.Anna School of Advanced Studies, who shared key takeaways from the project. Novi presented key findings of the project covering topics such as Life Cycle Assessments and other governance, opertational and procurement actions that contributed to the sucess of the project.
Emilien Gasc, Counsellor – Climate, Environment, Energy, Delegation of the EU to the UK joined the conference to share more about the role of EMAS certification and sustainability governance in sport. The popularity of EMAS is clear, with 4000 registered organisations in the EU currently. Benefits of EMAS registration mentioned by Gasc include improved environmental performance – 70% of registered EMAS organisations believe they have achieved savings – and improved legal compliance, due to a better understanding of staff and suppliers.
The conference ended with an interactive panel discussion with FREE KICKS partners from Malmö FF, Racing Club, Real Betis Balompié, Romanian Football Federation and Sport Positive. Sport Positive CEO and Founder, Claire Poole, set the scene by highlighting all the various activities the project partners leveraged to engage stakeholders and bring visibility to the project. In this discussion, they share insights on the process of their own environmental impact assessments and solutions that can help drive positive change forward. The panel also allowed for four football project partners to share their respective journeys to achieving a major project milestone: EMAS certification.
The full conference recording can be accessed here.
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*Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them
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