Describing and optimising travel distances in amateur football and handball in Germany [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]

Background Humanity faces dual existential crises of biodiversity loss and global warming. Acknowledging the environmental impact of sports, the United Nations is calling on the sports sector to take the lead in fighting climate change and adopting climate-neutral practices. Research on the greenhouse gas emissions of amateur league play is evolving but to date there are few studies that have described the travel patterns for large samples of teams and explored ways to reduce travel. Methods Travel distances for the 2022/23 season were calculated for 339 amateur football and handball teams playing in different leagues in Bavaria. The program Gurobi was utilised to optimise the grouping of teams in order to reduce travel by car. Results The study showed that playing in a higher amateur league most often resulted in longer travel distances for both women’s and men’s sports. Some amateur teams had to travel up to 2,958 kilometres for one season of play. All 339 teams combined travelled a total of 474,231 km (1398.9 per team in average) for away matches in the 2022/23 season of play. Optimising the groups in which teams play can reduce total travel distances by up to 19.7% while keeping the number of games played constant. Conclusions Our findings indicate that travel distances in amateur football and handball, despite being shorter than those of professional teams, contribute significantly to carbon emissions. Due to the greater number of amateur teams and the necessity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is crucial to explore ways of reducing travel in amateur sports. This touches on ethical issues regarding how much travel that causes greenhouse gas emissions is justified in amateur play. Algorithm based optimisation of which teams play against each other appears to be a straightforward, cost-effective, and scalable method for reducing travel emissions in amateur sports.