The World Cup brought excitement to New England, but FIFA’s partnership with Aramco tied the celebration to a fossil fuel giant driving the extreme heat reshaping the tournament. Photo: Adilson González Morales.
This summer, the World Cup came to New England, bringing matches to Foxborough and fans to communities across Massachusetts and Rhode Island for celebrations and cultural events. But behind that excitement, something troubling was unfolding: FIFA had given Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, a prominent platform to strengthen its public image.
There is a word for using sports to distract from harmful business practices: sportswashing.
Across the host cities, relentless heat made this contradiction difficult to ignore. Players and fans had a front-row seat to how climate change is already affecting the activities and events people love.
FIFA Gave Aramco a Global Platform
In 2024, FIFA announced that Aramco would become a major sponsor of several tournaments, including the 2026 Men’s World Cup and the 2027 Women’s World Cup. The deal handed the state-owned oil and gas giant a prominent stage at one of the most-watched sports events on the planet.
The concern was never just about a logo beside the field. Sponsoring the World Cup let Aramco wrap itself in the excitement, community, and international goodwill of the tournament.
Meanwhile, Aramco was seeking to expand the capacity of its East-West crude oil pipeline by as much as 2 million barrels per day – on top of the 7 million barrels it can already carry. That expansion would allow the oil giant to sell even more of the fossil fuels driving the climate crisis and threatening athletes and fans with dangerous heat.
Players and advocates called attention to that contradiction long before the first match began. More than 130 professional female players from 27 countries signed a letter asking FIFA to end its sponsorship deal with Aramco. Supporters included former U.S. team captain Becky Sauerbrunn, who said “the rights of women, LGBTQ+ rights and the health of the planet need to take a much bigger priority over FIFA making more money.” Male soccer players and coaches also spoke out. With the tournament coming to our backyard here in New England, CLF launched its own petition to drop the company. Once the tournament kicked off, those concerns only grew harder to dismiss – as the World Cup itself had to respond to the dangers of playing under extreme heat.
Extreme Heat Changed the 2026 World Cup
Heat wasn’t just something to watch for – it played a starring role on the field.
Before the World Cup began, FIFA announced several measures to help players manage extreme heat. Every match would include two three-minute hydration breaks, and matches in the hottest host cities moved to the evening. Organizers also mandated natural grass at all 11 NFL stadiums hosting World Cup matches in the U.S., effectively ruling out artificial turf, which studies have found can be up to 40°F hotter. Ahead of the tournament, Adidas introduced cooling gear, including an ice vest to help players lower their body temperature.
Those measures could help cool players down and reduce some of the risks. But they did nothing to address the larger problem: a rapidly overheating planet driven by the fossil fuel pollution produced by the tournament’s lead sponsor.
The Risks of Heat on the Field and Beyond
Soccer players work hard in any match, but extreme heat raises the stakes. It can affect their performance on the field and, more importantly, put their health and safety at risk.
That risk showed up at the first World Cup match held in Miami – Saudi Arabia, Aramco’s home country, against Uruguay. The heat index climbed past 100°F, prompting a National Weather Service extreme heat warning.
That kind of heat and humidity makes it much harder for athletes’ bodies to stay cool and hydrated – especially for players who came from cooler or less humid regions. It raises the risk of dizziness, muscle cramps, exhaustion, and impaired decision-making.
Norway experienced it firsthand. The team pulled Erling Haaland, the tournament’s breakout star, from its quarterfinal in Miami, played under a heat index again above 100°F. His coach’s explanation was blunt: Haaland “was finished.”
In the worst cases, exercising in extreme heat can cause heatstroke and lasting health problems. And the danger wasn’t confined to the players.
It reached the stands. On the tournament’s opening day, 22 people were treated for heat-related illness at Houston’s FIFA Fan Festival, and four were hospitalized. It reached us here in New England, where tens of thousands of Scotland fans arrived in June to find the region baking under historic temperatures. And it reached the workers and volunteers keeping the tournament running – cleaners, security staff, and vendors spending the day in the same heat the players faced.
Beyond the World Cup, kids in their own sports leagues – or simply playing in the backyard – increasingly have to cut outdoor time short as summers grow hotter.
Our communities can’t afford for these conditions to keep getting worse, but fossil fuel expansion keeps pushing us exactly in that direction.
Sportswashing Beyond the Final Whistle
This year’s World Cup may be over, but FIFA’s partnership with Aramco is not. The oil giant will remain a sponsor of the 2027 Women’s World Cup, giving it another international stage to polish its image.
And Aramco wasn’t the only one benefiting. FIFA promoted the 2026 tournament as its most sustainable yet, touting recycling programs and other “green” initiatives across host cities. All of this while taking sponsorship money from one of the world’s largest drivers of the carbon emissions harming our planet. No amount of recycling can erase the contradiction of elevating a headline sponsor whose core business is expanding fossil fuel production.
That’s greenwashing – the broader practice sportswashing belongs to. Polluters, and the institutions that take their money, dress themselves up as more environmentally responsible than they are. And it doesn’t stop at sports.
CLF has challenged this playbook elsewhere. Ahead of COP30 – the United Nations annual climate summit – we called on the U.N. and Brazil to cut ties with Edelman, a public relations firm with longstanding ties to major oil companies. The setting was different, but the principle was the same: Institutions that claim to serve the public good shouldn’t help fossil fuel interests distract from the harm they cause.
Don’t Let Polluters Buy the Moments We Love
CLF is fighting sportswashing so that we can enjoy the cultural moments that matter to us without backing companies that harm our environment. And you can help.
Our petition calling on FIFA to #DumpAramco has already gathered more than 20,000 pledges from community members and advocates across the country. Add your name. All of us deserve to enjoy the events we love without supporting major contributors to the pollution causing our planet to overheat.
