Teaming up for sustainability wins

GOAL (Green Operations & Advanced Leadership) is a collaborative network of 55 sustainability-focused live event venue operators who have a common interest in collaboration and sharing lessons learned. 

The GOAL network extends across NBA and NHL arenas, MLB and MLS stadiums, F1 circuits, entertainment venues, convention centers, cultural institutions, and more. Collectively, the network’s members draw over 60 million fans and guests every year.

GOAL has been in operation since 2022, guiding sports and entertainment organizations on their sustainability initiatives. As GOAL’s clients matured, the data management and insights from the data similarly needed to mature. Much of its data management had existed on another platform that didn’t empower the flexibility and data visualizations necessary to support the GOAL members as desired. GOAL turned to Slalom for assistance in identifying the best technical solution and executing its vision.   

“Working with a team of people familiar with the concept of sustainability and the storytelling behind it was really helpful,” says Kristen Fulmer, head of sustainability at GOAL. 

Slalom’s team worked closely with GOAL to transition existing data onto a new platform and build out a CRM Analytics dashboard using Salesforce Net Zero Cloud. The fully customizable dashboard shows month-over-month and year-over-year trends in water, energy, fuel, waste, and emissions. This new dashboard offered valuable analysis that GOAL and its members didn’t previously have, such as the ability to compare one venue to other similar facilities. Slalom’s team also delivered end-to-end training to encourage adoption across GOAL’s network.

“It’s an easy way to see and visualize their data and track their performance, to see the trends of their core KPIs and any troughs and spikes,” says Nicolai Johnson-Borelli, a senior principal at Slalom. “That’s information they can take action on to improve sustainability.”

Since venues may submit information irregularly or have incomplete data, Slalom implemented automated checks to ensure higher data quality. That process included building data gap-filling, duplicate flags, and outlier flagging. Now, GOAL can confidently share even more robust data with its members to enact positive changes. 

For example, GOAL saw one NHL arena consuming 33% more energy than other buildings. That finding led to the installation of utility submeters to better track energy usage, which ultimately resulted in an overall reduction in energy consumption. The GOAL Analytics Dashboard has also helped baseball stadiums visualize their water use in comparison to rainfall, bringing visibility to irrigation and opportunities for saving water without minimizing quality.

For example, an arena that hosts NBA games, among other events, informs fans about the proper waste disposal methods by converting waste volumes into the equivalent number of basketballs. The zero-waste venue can show fans they are helping save thousands of basketballs’ worth of waste per game.

Similarly, a professional hockey team used the GOAL Analytics Dashboard to calculate emissions avoided through its park-and-ride transportation system. The organization highlighted how fans were contributing to a greener game experience. While it called out the over 1,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent saved, it also translated that to understandable terms for fans—more than 169,000 gallons of gas saved, or the equivalent of over 440 commercial passenger flights between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

“The reason we’re doing this work in sustainability is to drive impact. The reach GOAL has is so great that a lot of our focus was looking at how this data informs fan and visitor behavior,” says Bryan Hollaway, Slalom’s global sustainability technology lead. 

The dashboard visualizations can help venues reach both short-term and long-term goals. Taylor Erklenz, an associate consultant at Slalom, shares how comparisons inspire action.

“All the energy and fuel data gets automatically converted in the system to kilowatt-hours,” Erklenz says. “It’s a better comparison to look at all the consumption data side by side because it’s in one standard unit. That’s a big piece of any move to Net Zero.”

As more organizations join GOAL and use the GOAL Analytics Dashboard, the data will become even more valuable since additional similar venues are being measured. The comparisons are aggregated and anonymized; operators and leagues can see comparisons by factors such as venue age, seating capacity, region, type of building, and more.

Slalom and GOAL have driven impressive results together. The two teams have developed some key takeaways for venues working toward similar sustainability or net-zero goals:

• Empower employees to be sustainability leaders: Treating sustainability as a key initiative and engaging leadership is critical. Whether you have someone entirely focused on tracking and improving net-zero efforts or if any employee can be a sustainability leader by working with GOAL, it’s important to empower employees to lead in achieving sustainability goals. 
• Use high-quality data, but don’t stress perfection: Better data quality can inform proper next steps, though some companies wait until data is perfect before taking action. If you’re missing a month or don’t have the complete number, that doesn’t mean that the data isn’t good data overall. Even the best athletes and musicians make mistakes, so don’t hesitate in the pursuit of perfection—a strong performance will still lead to something great.
• Engage your audience in your efforts: Most audience members at sporting events or concerts won’t know traditional sustainability KPIs. When a venue can help fans relate to their goals by speaking their language as it relates to the event, it’s much more powerful.

The GOAL Impact Report highlights what GOAL members have accomplished. There’s an opportunity for other events, venues, and teams to reach their sustainability goals—with Net Zero Cloud and CRM Analytics dashboards offering an assist.

“The ability to bulk upload into Net Zero Cloud and the connectivity from the data input to the dashboard is great,” Fulmer says. “It’s scalable to any live event operator or any event. From car-racing events to large-scale city events like the Olympics or All-Star Game, they can all use the dashboard and gain value from it.”