Change the Course - for a Better World Cup
Brief
KPMG is a sponsor of the Norwegian Alpine Ski Team. KPMG wanted to activate the sponsorship more internally and through brand-building activities, beyond mere logo exposure.
How could KPMG strengthen its market position by actively using the sponsorship in communication, both to build internal pride, show their ESG expertise and develop a more socially responsible brand?
The answer was a shared commitment with the Norwegian Alpine Ski Team to sustainability, for a sport that truly feels the impact of climate change.
The 2023/24 season was one of the worst seasons for the Alpine Skiing World Cup. 22% of all races were cancelled due to warmer climates and poor weather conditions. Through conversations with the athletes, KPMG’s ESG team realized that the race calendar leads to an enormous amount of travel for all national teams during the season, forcing athletes to travel long distances to find snow. This travel route is not sustainable, neither for the athletes nor the climate, requiring massive insight and analysis to come up with feasable solutions.
The objective was to challenge FIS (The International Ski Federation) so that we together with FIS and other national teams, can change the course we’re on for a better world cup.
Solution
This insight marked the beginning of an extensive effort to collect data, interview athletes and support staff, and explore various possibilities and solutions. The data was used to inform and drive content strategy, creation and distribution, and culminated in a unique climate report – ”Change the Course – for a better World Cup” – which, among 11 other recommendations, proposes a new World Cup calendar to save the sport. The recommendation was to hold the competitions in a more effective order - clustering events geographically so that athletes don’t have to travel so much back and forth.
In the weeks leading up to the launch of the report, we got the athletes to share videos of themselves visualizing the travel route in the World Cup Calendar - in the same way they visualize a racecourse before a race, but without revealing what it was. This started speculations and rumours among the alpine community.
On the day we released the report, the complete findings were shared with the International Ski Federation (FIS), the alpine skiing community as a whole and the press. This was timed to the season finale of the 2023/24 World Cup in Saalbach where all the athletes, the press and the International Ski Federation was present.
Results
The results came instantly after the release of the report. The objective was to challenge FIS (The International Ski Federation) to change the course we’re on and get the World Cup calendar changed for future seasons.
In the weeks that followed, representatives from The Norwegian Alpine Ski Team and the ESG Team from KPMG was invited by FIS to discuss the data, insight and proposed measures in the report, and as Claus Ryste, Head of Sports for Alpine Skiing in Norway, and a member of the Executive Board for Alpine Skiing in FIS, said:
”This is already on the table, and this is going to be a common goal for FIS and for each nation to do something about it. I think this is just the start of something that’s going to happen quickly.”
KPMG and the Norwegian Alpine Ski Team will keep pushing FIS, and follow up all inititives, and as a result, KPMG has been invited to see how they could do the same for all other nations.