October 12, 2022
British Cycling has been hit with a barrage of criticism after announcing an eight year sponsorship deal with oil giant Shell, and now an open letter asking them to reverse the deal has over 1000 signatures
“Is this satire?”
“An April Fool’s joke?”
“Absurd.”
“Greenwashing.”
“Disgusting.”
The list goes on. These are just a few of the responses to British Cycling’s recent announcement that it has signed an eight year agreement with Shell UK, explaining that the sponsorship would see a shared commitment between the two organisations to “accelerate British Cycling’s path to net zero”.
It doesn’t take a scientist or climate expert to see why, to many people, this partnership and the goals it has set out to achieve just simply don’t make sense. Shell has been found to be the seventh most polluting company in the world, while cycling is the best method of environmentally-friendly transport. In theory, Shell is in the business of encouraging people to use more oil and gas, and British Cycling is in the business of getting more people on bicycles; the two don’t go hand in hand.
Professional cycling is by no means a clean sport, just glance through the list of some of the biggest teams in the men’s WorldTour and this becomes clear – think of the involvement of companies like Ineos and TotalEnergies or the sponsorships from states like UAE and Bahrain. But British Cycling sits in a different sphere to professional teams as an organisation that represents its paying members. It has a responsibility to work for the interests of the people who support it. From looking at social media and the backlash to the announcement of the Shell sponsorship, it’s obvious that British Cycling hasn’t done that this time.
Image: Will Palmer/SWpix
Angry tweets and emails are seldom enough to make real change, so the Badvertising campaign – “a campaign to stop adverts fuelling the climate emergency” – has written an open letter to British Cycling asking them to reverse the eight year partnership with Shell UK. It states that there is an “incompatibility of aligning cycling with one of the world’s biggest polluters and major oil companies” and that “British Cycling has become a billboard for an oil company which has for decades lobbied against environmental action.”
It also outlines the fact that all sports are vulnerable to global heating,…