“Major” Conflict? As Climate Crisis Intensifies, Oil Majors Continue Sponsoring Major League Sports

From jersey patches to scoreboard signage, Big Oil branding is embedded throughout American sports.

The 76 gas station logo, a brand owned by Phillips 66, sits atop the scoreboard at Dodger Stadium. Credit: Photo courtesy of Evan George

One of America’s biggest major league sporting events – the World Series – starts tonight as the Los Angeles Dodgers host the New York Yankees. The Dodgers may have the best record in baseball this year, but they also have a pretty conspicuous sponsorship deal with a major oil and gas company and gas station retail brand.

Sitting atop the two scoreboards in Dodger Stadium is the orange-and-blue 76 gas station logo. This placement makes the logo not only highly (in the literal sense) visible but virtually unavoidable for fans in the stadium and those tuning into the broadcast. And the placement doesn’t stop at the scoreboards. As Los Angeles Times reporter Sammy Roth explains in a June 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.”

The oil company Phillips 66 now owns the 76 retail brand, which has had a longstanding partnership with the Dodgers and even helped finance the construction of Dodger Stadium. But this partnership has recently garnered criticism, from Roth calling it out in his LA Times columns to an activist campaign and petition with nearly 23,000 signatures demanding that the Dodgers immediately end its sponsorship deal with Phillips 66 and the 76 brand.

“The Dodgers shouldn’t be shilling for Big Oil, which is driving the climate change that’s fueling wildfires and other natural disasters,” Bill McKibben, the environmental writer and activist who co-founded 350.org, said in a statement in August announcing the campaign. McKibben is among several high-profile signatories of the open letter sent to the team’s owner Mark Walter; others include Hollywood actress Kyra Sedgwick, “Don’t Look Up” director Adam McKay’s Yellow Dot production studio, Doors rock band drummer John Densmore, and Harvard University professor and Merchants of Doubt co-author Naomi Oreskes. Last month leaders of the campaign held a rally and press conference at Dodger Stadium and delivered an updated petition to the Dodgers organization and owners. So far there has been no response, Zan Dubin, an environmental advocate and campaign lead, told me.

With the Dodgers now in the World Series, all eyes will be on the team, and Dubin said this offers an opportunity for the team’s leadership to take a stand against Big Oil. “We couldn’t think of a more ideal time for the Dodgers ownership to announce they intend to drop their sponsorship deal with Phillips 66,” she said, “because the world is watching.”

For now, however, the 76 logo that is so prominent throughout Dodger Stadium will get even more exposure as the Dodgers host the first two games (and potentially games 6 and 7) of the World Series.

“Millions of Americans tuning in to see a pure baseball rivalry will also see a powerful example of oil sponsorship, of fossil fuel sponsorship, of a sports team,” Evan George, communications director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law School, told me. As it turns out, there are many other examples, as the fossil fuel industry’s ties to American sports culture are fairly pervasive.

George, along with UCLA student researchers, did an analysis published in September that examined fossil fuel sponsorships across six US major league sports leagues. That survey, based on sponsorships reported by SportsPro Media’s Commercial Guides, found more than 60 sponsorship deals including 26 with oil and gas companies and 35 with utilities that operate fossil fuel power plants or sell fossil gas directly to customers. An updated count following the report’s publication finds more than 30 oil and gas company sponsorships in major league sports. And this is likely an undercount, George told me, as his analysis “provides a fairly good snapshot” but is not comprehensive of all the ways the industry embeds itself into our beloved sports.

Fossil fuel advertising and sponsorships in US major league sports can take multiple forms, George noted – “Everything from Phillips 66 and its 76 logo being the literal highest brand in Dodger Stadium that’s unavoidable and on the scoreboards and shows up in everybody’s photos and videos of the game, to a couple of teams that actually have oil company logos on their jerseys, to more subtle things like gas giveaways through a gas company’s ads.”

The jersey patches are a newer form of corporate sponsorship that started with the 2023 MLB season. Several teams actually have fossil fuel company logos emblazoned on their jersey sleeves, which is particularly obnoxious and troublesome in my opinion. The players become walking billboards for Occidental Petroleum or Marathon, at a time when there are growing calls – including from the UN Secretary-General – to cease or even ban fossil fuel advertising, as fossil fuel companies are driving a global climate and public health emergency. Unsurprisingly, the two Texas MLB teams have oil and gas companies as their jersey patch sponsors – Occidental sponsors the Houston Astros, while Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline and that has brought a SLAPP suit threatening to bankrupt Greenpeace USA, sponsors the Texas Rangers. The Cleveland Guardians, meanwhile, are sponsored by Marathon Petroleum, displaying the company’s logo on players’ jersey patches and at home base and along the first-base side of the field. The Guardians almost made it to the World Series this year; the New York Yankees ousted them in the American League Championship Series. As a Boston Red Sox fan I’m not one to root for the Yankees, but I am glad that they beat the Guardians in this case.

Cleveland Guardians player Austin Hedges. The Guardians’ uniforms display a Marathon Petroleum patch. Credit: Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0

The Yankees did have a Big Oil partnership of their own, a sponsorship deal with Hess that included the green and white Hess sign displayed on the outfield scoreboard at Yankee Stadium. But George told me the Yankees confirmed with him this week that the team has dropped that partnership as of this season. In that sense, the Yankees have already beaten their World Series opponent, George writes in a new blog piece. And the Dodgers have another oil and gas company sponsor besides Phillips 66 and 76. The Arco gas station brand, owned by Marathon Petroleum, also sponsors the Dodgers – on its website ARCO touts: “In addition to taking over the Dodgers stadium, ARCO participated in the yearly Dodger Days events hosted by the Dodgers Foundation.”

Two other California MLB teams, the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants, have sponsorship deals with Chevron. That seems a bit at odds with California’s reputation as a climate policy leader, and the state’s move to sue Chevron, Phillips 66 and other major oil companies over their decades-long campaigns of climate disinformation and delay.

George’s analysis found Chevron to have the most sponsorship deals with major league sports teams. In addition to the two California MLB teams, Chevron sponsors the Denver Broncos and the New Orleans Saints in the NFL, the Sacramento Kings and the New Orleans Pelicans in the NBA, and the Los Angeles Football Club and Austin FC as well as the Seattle Sounders (through its ExtraMile gas station brand) in Major League Soccer. Furthermore, Chevron is a founding partner and sponsor of the 2025 Super Bowl LIX Host Committee ambassador program, helping the city of New Orleans prepare to host the upcoming NFL championship game in February 2025.

For Chevron and other fossil fuel companies that sponsor sports teams, leagues, and sporting or community events, they use these sponsorships to help bolster their social license, just as they do when they sponsor other cultural institutions or university research programs.

Fossil fuel sponsorship of sports extends far beyond the US of course. A recent report from New Weather Institute, a UK-based think tank, finds that fossil fuel companies are spending at least $5.6 billion on sports sponsorships across more than 200 active deals, from rugby and soccer (or non-American football) to motor sports and golf.

“This kind of brand exposure – during games and outside the stadium – means the fans associate these sponsors with the thrill of watching their team win or with the positive benefits of community building. Researchers call this ‘sportswashing’ when an organization harnesses the positive impacts of sport to wash away their negative associations with problems such as environmental degradation,” George explains in his “Foul Ball” analysis.

When it comes to Big Oil, this “greenwashing through sports” is now starting to get more attention, from the campaign calling on the LA Dodgers to cut ties with Phillips 66, to more than 100 women’s soccer players releasing an open letter calling on FIFA to drop its sponsorship deal with the Saudi oil major Aramco.

“You see more people starting to draw attention to this,” George told me, “but it remains to be seen how the executives of the sports teams will react.”