Big Oil and Gas Goes Long With Super Bowl Greenwashing
Fossil fuel sponsorships are just one example of rampant “sportswashing”

The Los Angeles Dodgers have a partnership with Phillips 66, owner of the 76 gas station brand. | Photo by Kirby Lee via AP
As New Orleans readies to host Super Bowl LIX this Sunday, a volunteer ambassador program has been working to help welcome the hundreds of thousands of football fans streaming into the Big Easy. Who is sponsoring that program? Chevron, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers and a top climate polluter.
Chevron is not the only fossil fuel company assisting New Orleans in hosting the big game. In August 2023, Entergy, an energy utility company and active player in the oil and gas business, announced that it would be a founding partner of the 2025 Super Bowl Host Committee.
Fossil fuel industry sponsorships are common in professional sports. A September 2024 analysis from the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law School found more than 60 such sponsorship deals across six pro sports leagues. The study, based on sponsorships reported by SportsPro Media’s Commercial Guides, examined deals with Big Oil firms and energy utilities that own fossil fuel assets or supply fossil gas to consumers. It is not meant to be comprehensive, however, and is almost certainly an undercount of the number of industry sponsorships in American sports, according to Emmett Institute’s communications director Evan George, who led the study.
“The [oil and gas] companies benefit from sponsorship by tying their brand to the ecstatic nature of a local sports team and being a community hero, when they very much do not want to be seen as a climate villain."
Another recent analysis of fossil fuel sponsorships in sports worldwide found 205 active deals totaling over $5.6 billion. That, too, is very likely an underestimate as most deals lack transparency about the details or precise amount of money involved, says the New Weather Institute, a UK-based think tank that produced the study.
Industry critics see this cozy relationship between polluting industries and professional sports as greenwashing, or “sportswashing.” “The [oil and gas] companies benefit from sponsorship by tying their brand to the ecstatic nature of a local sports team and being a community hero, when they very much do not want to be seen as a climate villain,” George explained.
“Few people love oil companies, but people really love their favorite team,” said Jamie Henn, a climate activist and founder of Fossil Free Media. “Companies capitalize on that by sponsoring a team, stadium, or event and hoping that the positive vibes rub off on them.”
Just looking at American major league sports, examples of Big Oil sponsorships abound. In addition to its Super Bowl host committee sponsorship, Chevron currently sponsors several NFL teams including the New Orleans Saints and the Denver Broncos. In a four-second video clip posted by the Saints on X in August, Saints player Chase Young is shown wearing a jersey with a Chevron patch emblazoned on the front. The Saints also have active partnership deals with Shell and other companies in the oil and gas industry, including Entergy, Venture Global, and Halliburton, while the Broncos have additional deals with Phillips 66 and the energy utility company Xcel Energy.
Phillips 66 is also a sponsor of the Seattle Seahawks and the Houston Texans. The company’s deal with the Texans includes naming rights to a part of the stadium (which itself is named after another energy industry sponsor, NRG) as well as the listed fuel provider for the team’s mascot vehicle for community engagements. As Phillips 66 brand manager John Field explicitly says, “These sponsorships … create a positive association with Phillips 66.”
NRG Energy (headquartered in Houston), a utility with a fuel mix that is over 80 percent fossil fuels, sponsors multiple NFL teams including the Texans and the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants, the Philadelphia Eagles, and the San Francisco 49ers.
Additional examples of oil company sponsorships in the NFL include Lucas Oil sponsoring the Indianapolis Colts and Shell sponsoring the Los Angeles Rams. Shell’s sponsorship deal with the Rams includes a gasoline discount promotion—25 cents off per gallon every time the Rams play, offered exclusively to fans enrolled in Shell’s Fuel Rewards program—as well as the oil company’s support (providing equipment, jerseys, and more) for Los Angeles–area flag football teams. Sponsorships of youth sports is thus in some cases part of companies’ partnership deals with major league teams.
In major-league basketball, for example, the Boston Celtics currently have a partnership deal with Gulf Oil. The deal includes scoreboard and courtside Gulf marketing, gas giveaways for fans, and Gulf sponsorship of youth athlete enrollment in the Celtics’ summer basketball camps. The Sacramento Kings have sponsorship deals with ARCO, a gas station brand now owned by Marathon Petroleum, and with Chevron. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, is a league sponsor and official motor fuel partner of the NBA and the WNBA.
In professional soccer, the Houston stadium where the Dynamo (men’s team) and Dash (women’s team) play is named after Shell. And the Los Angeles Football Club and Austin FC both have partnership deals with Chevron.
Then there is Major League Baseball, where oil and gas sponsorships seem to be particularly conspicuous, to the point where several teams even have oil company logos displayed as patches on their jerseys. In Texas, the Houston Astros have a jersey patch deal with Occidental Petroleum, while the Texas Rangers have one with Energy Transfer Partners. The Cleveland Guardians have a sponsorship deal with Marathon Petroleum that includes displaying the company’s logo on players’ jersey patches and at home base and along the first-base side of the field.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, the 2024 World Series champions, have a long-standing partnership with Phillips 66, which owns the 76 gas station brand. The 76 logo is highly visible in Dodger Stadium, sitting atop the two scoreboards. But the brand placement extends beyond the scoreboards. As the Los Angeles Times’ Sammy Roth explained last year in a column: “There are 76 gasoline ads plastered throughout the ballpark, from the visiting team’s bullpen to the ribbon board screens lining the stands.… Even the on-deck circles on the field, where batters prepare to hit, are orange-and-blue 76 logos.”
Roth has criticized this partnership in his columns, calling on the Dodgers to drop its deal with Phillips 66. His crusade inspired the formation of an activist campaign demanding that the Dodgers immediately end their sponsorship deal with Phillips 66 and the 76 brand. The campaign includes a petition with nearly 23,000 signatures, which points out that Phillips 66 has now been criminally indicted for dumping thousands of gallons of wastewater into LA’s sewer system.
Zan Dubin, an environmental advocate and campaign lead, told Sierra the campaign will be stepping up its call for the Dodgers to sever sponsorship ties with the oil company. “We plan to reiterate our demand, led by Dodger fans, that the team’s management immediately drop the Phillips 66 sponsorship deal, especially now that the company is facing charges,” Dubin said. A demonstration is planned for February 12 outside the federal courthouse on East Temple Street in Los Angeles following Phillip 66’s 1 p.m. arraignment.
“Besides sponsoring an Earth Day event, sponsoring sports has got to be the most ironic form of fossil fuel advertising."
The demand is coming at a time when the fossil fuel industry faces mounting public scrutiny and backlash. Last June, UN Secretary-General António Guterres rebuked the industry as “godfathers of climate chaos” and called on all countries to ban fossil fuel advertising. He also urged PR firms to drop fossil fuel clients and media and tech companies to cease taking fossil fuel advertising.
Apart from the Dodgers campaign, there have been very few public pressure campaigns and little organizing, at least in the US, around fossil fuel advertising and sponsorships in sports. “As far as I know, there haven’t been a lot of these types of campaigns,” George said.
That may start to change, especially as more fans and athletes begin to connect the dots between the industry whose products are driving the climate crisis and corresponding impacts like extreme heat that increasingly threaten outdoor sports.
“Besides sponsoring an Earth Day event, sponsoring sports has got to be the most ironic form of fossil fuel advertising. Global warming is making it harder to do so many sports, with heat waves cancelling marathons and warmer winters threatening skiing, outdoor hockey, and more,” Henn said. “There are few enjoyable sports on a hot, polluted planet.”