It's one of the major events of the year at Hong Kong The Hong Kong Sevens, a rugby sevens tournament renowned for its unique atmosphere, was held at the end of March. For this 2025 edition, the competition moved to the Kai Tak Sports Park (50,000 seats). In terms of the travel involved for the European teams in particular, the relocation will have had only a limited impact, as the competition is one of the longest away legs of the year for most of the participants: a 12-hour flight for the French team, for example. As a symbol of this, an airline is sponsoring the event: Cathay Pacific in this case. It's an opportunity to take a look at the 'daily lives' of some rather special business travellers: top sportsmen and women, who have to travel every week, with a performance obligation which, more than ever, goes hand in hand with a duty to set an example in the face of global warming.
So are professional athletes just like any other business travellers? It's hard to answer, because the reality of business travel varies so much from one sport and category to another. If only because the economic reality is not the same depending on the discipline, the level, the philosophy and the athletes themselves. France is a glaring example of this great discrepancy between approaches. While the Minister for Transport at the time, Clément Beaune, proudly welcomed the rugby players who had travelled by train for the 2023 World Cup, PSG coach Christophe Galtier had been throwing kerosene on the fire some time earlier for his group's journey by plane between Paris and Nantes. " We've spoken to the company that organises our travel. We're in the process of seeing if we can't travel by float. ". An avenue for the most responsible travel managers? The former Parisian coach was quick to backtrack on environmental issues: " Even though I love humour, and it's important to me, I realised that this was a tasteless joke on a very sensitive subject. "...
This sensitive subject, The Shift Project The French Football Federation (FFF) and the French Rugby Federation (FFR) are the logical partners. The think tank founded by Jean-Marc Jancovici carried out an extensive audit of the impact of French sport at both professional and amateur levels. The report "Decarbonising sport was published in February and provides a very detailed analysis of the issue - too detailed, some would say, when it attempts, for example, to put a figure on the carbon impact of buying televisions to watch the matches... Unsurprisingly, The Shift Project's study points the finger at the bad practices that are still common in team travel. " It should be noted that many trips are made by aircraft specially chartered for the teamnote the authors of the report. These journeys, which involve the use of smaller aircraft, emit on average twice as much as flights in commercial aircraft, which carry more passengers. Finally, travel by professional sportsmen and women often involves empty coach journeys, for example to pick up their teams at the airport. These journeys are responsible for around 6 % of the carbon footprint of team travel. ".
The Decarbonising Sport report doesn't just put a figure on the problem: it also attempts to propose more or less ambitious levers for action. But unfortunately, the reality on the ground seems a long way from most of the recommendations. Among them is a reduction in the number of meetings and journeys. The inclusion of South African clubs in the European Rugby Cup, and the forthcoming launch of a new Club World Cup for football, clearly put a damper on these good resolutions...
If you look closely, the decision-making criteria are not so different for a professional club as they are for a more 'traditional' company. The issues are the same, in the sense that you need to find where to place the cursor on environmental responsibility, traveller well-being and costs. And in the Top 14 as in the CAC 40, there are the good and bad pupilsThere's no room for complacency, no room for rhetoric and no room for action. The participation of the South African teams in the European Rugby Cup is particularly revealing of the challenges facing travel management for athletes. A few months ago, the flight of the Lions team caused a stir. What shocked the web was not the carbon footprint of such a trip for an 80-minute match - which they lost - but the conditions in which the rugby players travelled. The image of these 2-metre athletes struggling to find a place for their legs in economy class was indeed something to smile about. All the more so when you consider that the team in question has the sponsorship of a famous airline on its jersey...
Yet this image reflected an economic imperative that traditional business travellers and their travel managers are well aware of. Martin Anayi, Managing Director of the URC (United Rugby Championship), explained at the time: " When we drew up a travel plan, which was a cost-benefit analysis presented to the other participants as part of the promotion of the expansion of the tournament, the average price of a plane ticket was 35 % lower than it is today in South Africa. ". Martin Anayi continues: " I think it's going to be very important for us to reduce costs by buying tickets in bulk, getting better itineraries and improving programming. We can make travelling much more enjoyable and we're well aware of that. It's something we're really working hard on. (...) "Another way of achieving this, but this will have to be approved by SA Rugby, would be to lengthen each tour slightly, so that we're only travelling to Europe twice a season instead of three or four times. This would be more advantageous from a financial point of view and would allow us to invest a little more in travel. We're looking into this possibility. To reduce the number of flights, we could add a match to the tour. During a four-match tour, the teams can settle into a place and integrate into their hotels and their environment. ".
Higher, faster, stronger?
Travel managers are no strangers to the subtle balancing act of ensuring travellers' well-being without inflating the bill. With the "little extra cost" of multiplying the investment by the number of players and staff, and often much more than a single piece of cabin baggage... Failing to apply Coubertin's motto during their flights, professional clubs have to deal with "more people, heavier loads, bigger clubs"... Hannah Schenk, Head of Events Travel at Reed & Mackayreminds us: " Obviously, in the case of sports teams, it's not just a question of one person travelling with a suitcase. The organisation of the trip is more complex. The logistics of managing extra luggage and sports equipment must be taken into account. For example, athletes need their javelins, canoeists need their boats, surfers need their boards. All this equipment requires specific administrative formalities, logistical assistance from the airlines, and smooth pick-up at the destination. If there are delays of a few days, this disrupts training programmes. We have suggested using AirTags to make it easier to monitor and manage the situation. "says Hannah Schenk.
