Create a culture of environmental sustainability

We are excited to announce the launch of our environmental sustainability challenge, in partnership with LaLiga. This challenge is open for all Benelux companies who are passionate about reducing the environmental impact and promoting sustainability for all the clubs in LaLiga. It's an opportunity to interact and present your solution(s) to the LaLiga clubs. Increase the chance to launch your innovation(s) in Spain.

The challenge consists of an initial application process, and a final selection process. The 8 selected companies will present their sustainable solution in a hybrid event for and to the Spanish clubs. This event takes place June 26 at the Rat Verlegh stadium, home to NAC Breda (The Netherlands). 

To apply for the challenge, please complete the online application form latest by June 7 at 18:00 hours. We ask you to provide information on your initiative.

This challenge is about creating a deeper culture of environmental sustainability within LaLiga, and we believe that you have a role to play in achieving this goal! We look forward to your application. 

Description of Challenge / Innovation Goals

LaLiga and its clubs are looking for tools that meet the standards of the European Union in terms of environmental sustainability in sports. It's a challenge for them to meet these standards in order to create a Sustainable Infrastructure in the future. This challenge will focus on the topics: 

1. Energy Consumption & Mobility - Two lines that contribute to the same impact: greenhouse gas emissions. We would be looking for management measures, such as measuring the carbon footprint.

Energy Consumption: The main challenges for sports entities are focused on establishing indicators and objectives in the short, medium and long term that allow performance monitoring in energy management. The initiatives must pursue the optimization in the use of energy resources and the use of renewable energies.

Mobility: Football clubs are generators of a very high number of trips, either directly or indirectly, which are associated with energy consumption and polluting emissions. For this reason, clubs must measure their impact and implement all the measures within their reach to achieve sustainable mobility. This issue contemplates, on the one hand, the displacement of club professionals; and on the other hand, the displacement of the spectators. The latter should be dealt with in greater depth in the social dimension, since the influx of spectators to events must be planned to guarantee safe, comfortable, responsible and sustainable transport for all people.

2. Generation of Waste - The generation of waste is another of the most considerable impacts generated by a football club, especially during sporting events, so measures must be taken to, firstly, try to reduce it, and then carry out proper waste management of the same.

3. Water Consumption - water consumption constitutes another environmental impact on which improvements can be established which, as in the previous cases, go through its measurement in the first place in order to establish adequate measures to reduce consumption.

4. Sustainable (re)Construction - Sustainable (re)construction is a transversal concept to the environmental issues mentioned above, of special relevance for clubs due to their infrastructures. The concepts of sustainability and eco-efficiency have led to the appearance of new forms of construction aimed at reducing the impacts of this activity. The new construction or renovation of stadiums, training areas and/or sports cities, represents one of the greatest opportunities for clubs to reduce their environmental impact by incorporating sustainable criteria in the works.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for companies and technologies capable of providing solutions to meet the environmental sustainability challenges from the clubs as mentioned above.

The companies / solution must meet:

• Year of incorporation - latest 2022
• At least 2 employees
• At least capital raised, preferably turnover
• Maturity of the solution at least prototype validated in a real environment 
• Meet the EU sustainability requirements

Criteria

What are we going to look at when selecting the best entries?

• Strategic fit: Capacity of the project to respond to the challenge proposed and its value contribution.
• Level of maturity: The project already has a commercial product or a proven MVP with some relevant customers / users or, in the short term, may have an MVP in the process of validation.
• Team: The proposed team meets the requirements of number, dedication and training.
• Market potential: The size of the target customer(s) to which the project is addressed, as well as the purchasing capacity of these customer(s). The company must have a potential long-term impact on the sports sector. In addition, it will be positively valued if they can generate impact in related sectors.
• Feasibility: To have a business plan based on economic-financial profitability of the project and the generation of employment.

Conditions of Participation

What kind of startups / scale-ups / companies are we looking for? What do you have to meet?

• Be a legal entity (registered at the chamber of commerce in the Benelux).
• The team will be formed by minimum of 2 employees, of which at least 1 will have a full dedication to the company.
• Responsible Declaration of being up-to-date with their obligations with the State Tax Agency with the applicable Tax Agency, with the local administration and with the Social Security Treasury.
• The founding partners and members of the team with decision-making capacity must attend and actively participate in the hybrid event on June 26 in Breda (The Netherlands).
• The company agrees to participate in the communication and dissemination activities that the promoting and collaborating partners may organize in order to promote the participants in the event and beyond.
• Being a member of the Sports + Vitality community is a bonus. Contact Aswin Steenhof for more information: aswin@sportsvitalityhub.com. 

Your pitch (max 6 pages / 18 slides)

Besides filling in the form, we expect the company to upload a pitch with the following information (please make sure you don't forget to describe these topics):

• Company profile including year of incorporation, number of employees, turnover / capital raised and contact details
• Identification of the need or problem to be solved
• Value proposition and business model
• Identification of potential users, customers or market
• Main functionalities and Competitive differentiation
• Internationalization plan
• Scalability and growth
• Technical definition of the project (at a technical level) and commercially viable

Timeline

Take these important dates into account:

Monday May 8: Application open

Wednesday June 7: Application deadline (18:00 hours)

Friday June 16: Selection announcement

Monday June 26: Event in Breda (NL)

The pitch may be submitted in free form (presentation/slide deck, letter form), but must be uploaded as a PDF file (landscape or portrait A4) (max. 30MB). Video’s, examples websites etc. can be included in a link. Pitches must be in English!