Success in professional sport is no longer defined only by championships, ticket sales, or television ratings. Today, leadership in sport is equally measured by how leagues contribute to environmental responsibility, social well-being, and long-term community resilience.
For the Canadian Football League (CFL), a league deeply interwoven with the country’s identity, sustainability represents both a natural evolution and a powerful opportunity. From the prairie skyline above Mosaic Stadium to the shores of Lake Ontario beside BMO Field, the CFL’s presence mirrors the diversity of the Canadian landscape. As CFL Commissioner Stewart Johnston emphasized in his September 2025 “Tradition Meets Innovation” vision, focusing on entertainment, safety, and community is essential to ensuring success for generations to come. By aligning the future of football with environmental stewardship, the CFL is well-positioned to champion these values through its national platform.
This roadmap presents a vision of how the CFL can make sustainability an essential part of its modernization, operational excellence, and community engagement. The intent is not to critique the league’s present state but to highlight its readiness to lead. The CFL now stands at the threshold of a defining moment, one where its next chapter can be written not only through athletic achievement but through collective leadership in building a more sustainable future.
State of the Industry: Establishing a shared sustainability foundation
Across the CFL, progress in sustainability is emerging through dedicated team initiatives and local partnerships. What has been missing is a unified framework that connects these efforts and communicates them as part of a league-wide commitment.
Teams across the league are already advancing meaningful work. In Winnipeg, the Blue Bombers have set a high bar through their long-standing partnership with Recycle Everywhere. Since 2011, this program has diverted more than half of game-day waste from landfills and recently expanded to include player ambassadors like stars Zach Collaros and Dalton Schoen, who helped kick off sustainability month in October 2024. In 2025, the club also began working with Community Helpers Unite, an Indigenous-led non-profit in North Winnipeg, to rescue food and transform it into meals and bundles for Treaty One Territory families.
The next step is to coordinate these successes under a common vision. A shared framework for data collection, reporting, and collaboration would allow each club to measure its progress consistently and identify opportunities for improvement. By developing standardized metrics for energy use, water consumption, and waste management, the CFL can move from anecdotal success to measurable impact. This is not a shortcoming but an emerging opportunity for the league to set a national example of collective progress in professional sport.
Sponsorship Alignment: Turning partnerships into platforms for progress
Corporate partnerships are central to the CFL’s success and provide a unique opportunity to influence change. Many league sponsors operate in high-impact sectors such as energy, aviation, and resource development. These industries are also among the most active in advancing sustainability and technology.
This alignment positions the CFL as a collaborator in transition rather than an observer of it. The league’s announcement in May 2025 of Mobil (Imperial Oil) as its Official Fuel Partner, alongside long-standing partners like Mosaic and FCL, highlights the strength of these industrial relationships. By inviting these sponsors to participate in the league’s sustainability programs, whether by funding clean-energy projects or piloting low-emission technologies, the CFL can turn commercial partnerships into platforms for innovation.
In 2025, the CFL partnered with Capital Power, an energy leader committed to respectful development in Indigenous territories, to support youth flag football clinics and gear. Credit: Capital Power/CFL
Recent initiatives demonstrate this potential:
Community Resilience: The CFL’s 2025 partnership with Capital Power, an energy leader committed to respectful development in Indigenous territories supported youth flag football clinics and a $30,000 donation match for Indigenous Youth Roots.Corporate ESG: The Montreal Alouettes’ and BC Lions’ collaboration with TELUS showcases alignment with strong corporate sustainability goals.
Developing a collaborative sustainability framework would help formalize this approach. Sponsors could opt into co-branded initiatives that promote mutual goals for community benefit and environmental progress. In this way, sponsorship becomes more than financial support; it becomes a demonstration of shared leadership in Canada’s low-carbon transition.
Stadium Infrastructure: Greening the gridiron
The nine stadiums that host CFL games reflect both the league’s proud heritage and its potential for transformation. Many facilities already incorporate advanced sustainable design, while others offer a chance to reimagine what modern, community-centred venues can achieve. Teams operate within and support these stadium efforts but do not own the facilities.
The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) has long emphasized that LEED certification offers more than recognition. It verifies measurable performance across energy, water, materials, and the indoor environment. Mosaic Stadium in Regina stands out for its pioneering use of FieldTurf Revolution 360, made with material from approximately 30,000 recycled tires, along with energy-efficient LED lighting. Projects such as Ottawa’s Lansdowne 2.0 redevelopment, which targets LEED Silver certification and includes rainwater reuse and on-site renewable readiness, show what is possible when sustainability is built into design from the start. The league can encourage collaboration with stadium operators to embed green standards into future renovations so that every fan experience across Canada reflects a shared commitment to environmental excellence.
The LEED certified Mosaic Stadium was the first in the Canadian Football League to feature FieldTurf Revolution 360 and the first to feature LED lighting. Credit: CNW Group/City of Regina
Measuring What Matters: Managing travel and operational emissions
Travel is an essential part of the CFL experience. Teams and fans alike cross the country, and this movement is part of what makes the league uniquely Canadian. Measuring the environmental impact of that travel, however, allows the CFL to lead with transparency and innovation.
Using the United Kingdom’s DEFRA 2024 conversion factor for short-haul flights, the league’s estimated regular-season travel footprint is approximately 4,100 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year. This is roughly comparable to the annual emissions of about 650 passenger vehicles.
Rather than viewing this as a problem, the CFL can use this baseline as a foundation for action. Key steps include optimizing scheduling to cluster regional games, encouraging rail or bus travel for shorter routes such as Toronto to Ottawa, and collaborating with airline partners to explore sustainable aviation fuel. The league can also invest in verified Canadian carbon-offset projects to balance unavoidable emissions.
Strategic Roadmap: The four quarters of a sustainable CFL
Sustainability is best achieved through steady, coordinated progress. The following four quarters represent potential steps for consideration, a practical game plan that could advance the CFL’s environmental and social leadership through distinct but interconnected stages.
First Quarter: Sustainable Infrastructure
The first stage focuses on upgrading and modernizing the facilities where Canadians gather to celebrate the game.
The Commissioner’s September 2025 announcement regarding major field reconfigurations specifically moving goalposts to the back of the end zones and shortening the field by 2027, presents a unique operational window. Teams can work with stadium operators during this mandatory construction period to implement complementary upgrades (e.g., improved drainage or lighting retrofits), maximizing capital efficiency.
Consider conducting comprehensive energy and water audits for every CFL venue by 2028 to identify efficiency priorities.Inspired by successes at venues such as Mosaic Stadium, develop the capacity to publish a Stadium Sustainability Scorecard each year to track progress and share best practices.
While the federal Green and Inclusive Community Buildings (GICB) program primarily supports non-commercial public spaces (with the exception of Percival Molson Stadium via McGill University), the CFL can pursue other pathways. Provincial infrastructure programs, municipal partnerships, and private investment through sustainability-focused sponsorships can all help finance sustainable upgrades.
Second Quarter: Smart Operations
Strong infrastructure must be matched by efficient operations. The second phase focuses on embedding sustainability into daily decision-making across all teams.
Work to establish a league-wide baseline for waste diversion and consider setting a goal of achieving 75 per cent diversion by 2028, modelled on Winnipeg’s long-running success.Several teams are already demonstrating leadership in sustainable procurement and operations. For example:The Calgary Stampeders use fully recyclable single-stream packaging and partner with Le Chefs Table to support local food banks while sourcing food from local purveyors. The Ottawa REDBLACKS, working with Levy Restaurants, divert 65 percent of waste to compost (3.9 tonnes) and 23 percent to food donation, sending roughly 200 meals per game to Second Harvest / La Tablée des Chefs; they also use refillable popcorn buckets and aluminum cups to reduce single-use plastics. In 2025 the Winnipeg Blue Bombers began working with Community Helpers Unite, an Indigenous-led non-profit in North Winnipeg dedicated to increasing food security and building socio-economic independence for relatives within Treaty One Territory.
Explore formalizing travel measurement, reduction, and offset programs, beginning with playoff and Grey Cup travel.
Third Quarter: Fan and Community Engagement
The CFL’s relationship with its fans and communities has always been one of its greatest strengths. The third stage focuses on deepening that connection through visible, participatory initiatives, such as:
Consider launching a central online sustainability hub that shares progress, team stories, and fan resources for reducing environmental impact.Enhance Purolator Tackle Hunger: Expand this highly successful program to include food-waste recovery so that unused concessions are redirected to community kitchens. This aligns with the “New Era” of the partnership announced in September 2025, which aims to address the surging crisis of over 2 million monthly food bank visits across Canada.Encourage players, coaches, and staff to volunteer in local environmental projects such as tree planting or park cleanups.The BC Lions continue to lead in youth education through their Energy Champions program with FortisBC. Each offseason, the club conducts 80 school visits (including three provincial road trips), reaching an average of 22,303 elementary students per year from 2021 to 2025 on the topic of sustainability.
Fourth Quarter: Partnerships and Governance
For sustainability to endure, it must be embedded in how the league operates and governs itself. Here are a few examples:
Create a premier sponsorship category: Official Sustainability Partner of the CFL. Modelled on the successful partnership between Major League Baseball and WM (Waste Management), launched in April 2024, this exclusive category would be targeted at national brands with strong ESG commitments.Consider building sustainability capacity at the leadership level to oversee implementation, ensure data integrity, and represent the league in national dialogues on climate and sport.Work towards integrating environmental metrics into the CFL’s annual reporting and Board of Governors agenda to ensure continued accountability and transparency.Next Steps: A league leading the transition
The Canadian Football League is entering a new era of opportunity. Through this four-quarter roadmap, the league can evolve from individual initiatives to a cohesive, forward-looking sustainability strategy that mirrors the resilience and spirit of Canada itself.
This is not a story of catching up but of stepping forward. The CFL can use its influence, reach, and community presence to champion environmental innovation and social connection across the country. By taking measurable action and maintaining an open dialogue with fans, partners, and communities, the league can show that sustainable sport is more than an aspiration—it is a reflection of who Canadians are.
Greening the gridiron means leaving a legacy that extends beyond the scoreboard. It means building a league that plays not only for victory but for the future of the communities and country it represents.
Mandar Velapure is a Project Manager, Research at the Canada Green Building Council (CAGBC). He would like to thank Herb Fung, Senior Manager, Communications & Public Affairs, CFL and the entire CFL team for their invaluable feedback, insights, and support. Their guidance and the additional information provided by the clubs were instrumental in shaping this roadmap.