How Artificial Intelligence could contribute to sport sustainability

This paper examines how artificial intelligence (AI) can act as a catalyst to integrate sport, environmental sustainability, and digital innovation into a systemic approach to sport ecology. Sport ecology has largely focused on fragmented sustainability actions—especially climate—while overlooking broader environmental challenges like biodiversity loss and pollution. This study is novel in proposing AI not just as a tool, but as a transformative driver of “systemic sport ecology” that connects data, stakeholders, and decision-making across scales.

This conceptual paper combines sport management, environmental science, and AI to develop an integrative framework. It reviews different types of AI (discriminative, generative, and agentic) and illustrates their potential applications across sport operations, environmental monitoring, and governance.

AI can enhance sport sustainability by improving data integration, forecasting, and decision-making, enabling more efficient operations and better environmental outcomes. Advanced systems—especially agentic AI—can simulate complex interactions and dynamically optimize trade-offs between performance, fan experience, and ecosystem health.

Sport managers can use AI to move beyond isolated sustainability initiatives and adopt integrated, data-driven strategies that align performance, fan engagement, and environmental responsibility.

CITE: Arbieu, U., Carneiro, L., Tieo, S., & Courchamp, F. (2025). Artificial intelligence as a catalyst for systemic sport ecology. Journal of Applied Sport Management, 17. DOI: 10.7290/jasm1766SS

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