There’s a good reason why the world's biggest brands attach themselves to sport. It’s a universal language that crosses cultures and geographies, and where good business aligns with an emotional investment and moments of excitement or overcoming profound challenges. And so, in San Francisco recently – at our US Merchant Forum –leaders with our partners at New York Liberty and Nike, and Ant International’s Chief Sustainability Officer Leiming Chen took to the stage for a panel that discussed bringing communities together, about making social impact, and engaging the public and consumers positively.
Of course, 'sport for good' risks becoming a cliché. Authenticity here really does need 360-degree engagement. And our panellists described how sustainability efforts are best executed in the round, crossing sectors, specialities and borders.
The 360 Imperative: Everyone Has to Feel It
Shana Stephenson, Chief Brand Officer, New York Liberty, perhaps put it best. There’s first and foremost a standard the team holds itself to: every initiative must engage fans, partners, and players at the same time. Sustainability cannot be a back-office commitment or a press-release moment, it must be embedded into fan experiences, player engagement and community programs, delivered in ways people can see and participate in
"Everything that we do has to be 360” she remarked. “It has to engage the community, our players, and our partners. Our fans hold us accountable. If we don't show up in an authentic way, we hear about it."
This kind of accountability is a distinctive feature of sports institutions that perhaps commercial companies do not experience as much. Fans are not just consumers; they are advocates, critics, and co-owners of a team's reputation. So when the Liberty embarks on a programme, the expectation from its fanbase is consistency, every year, showing up for them.
The Power of Commitment is Not Just a Campaign
As such, one of the most interesting aspects of the Liberty's approach to sustainability across the New York community is a deliberate move away from seasonal campaigns, and toward permanent, and growing programmes that constantly strive to make a bigger difference, year on year. The team's Sneaker Drive — which encourages fans and community members to donate used trainers, in partnership with nonprofit organisation Soles4Souls — began as a month-long initiative and has expanded every year since its 2023 launch. Last season it collected over 500 pairs, diverting more than 700 pounds of waste from local landfills and creating over $5,000 in economic value for families and communities. This season, they’ve set the target to double that, and it’s all supported by the new partnership with Ant International. Indeed, Ant International’s Alipay+ kicked off its partnership as an Official Sponsor and Innovation Partner for Sustainability of the New York Liberty, by supporting the Liberty’s Shoe Sorting Day on December 18, as part of the team’s Season of Giving initiatives. Volunteers sorted donated brand-new sneakers for distribution to students experiencing homelessness across New York City.
The Liberty’s 'Threes for Trees' programme plants a real tree in New York for every three-pointer scored during a game. Performance directly impacting environmental action. And, the Liberty are certainly not short of three-pointers, Shana Stephenson mused, especially if you consider that they have one of the league's most prolific three-point scorers.
And so, through initiatives like these, we can see a meaningful, and moreover visibly growing environmental commitment across the city and with every game played. They’re showing up, every year.
The most effective sustainability programmes are not activations. They are long-term commitments that deepen with each season.
Making Consumers Your Participants, Not Audiences
It was great to hear Li Fan, Sustainability Director at Nike’s observation about the evolution of sustainability communications. Back-end stories, be those renewable energy procurement, water treatment, or carbon reduction targets, are no longer enough to engage younger generations.
"Our younger generation no longer wants to read a single sentence in the New York Times about how Nike is cleaning up its supply chain,” said Li Fan. “They want a way to be part of it."
Nike's response here has been to design consumer-facing programmes that turn individual actions into a more collective impact. A shoe recycling programme uses a technology called Nike Grind, enabling consumers to hand over their worn Nike footwear. This footwear is then turned into new sports playgrounds in city and rural areas – enabling consumers and athletes to enjoy more sports. Nike’s work is partnered with Ant Group’s Ant Forest, leveraging its vast ecosystem scope and high user engagement. Interesting to note, the running tracks that navigate around Ant Group’s Hangzhou headquarters are built from Nike Grind-enabled, recycled running shoes.
The two initiatives work in parallel: Nike’s consumers see recycled sports areas being built more widely; Ant Forest creates a direct correlation between digital actions and business engagement, with a meaningful, real-world difference being made in the heart of communities.
All the while, the consumer and the audience are protagonists in the sustainability story. Again, this is something that sport instinctively understands, that fans come alive when they feel they have a stake in the outcome.
Ant Forest: Gamification at a Billion-User Scale
Leiming Chen, Ant International's Chief Sustainability Officer, ventured deeper into Ant Forest. Ant Forest is a gamified mini-app, embedded within Alipay, that is driving the adoption of a low-carbon footprint as a lifestyle choice for users. Indeed it’s become arguably the world's most successful public engagement platform for environmental action. Users earn 'green energy points' by making low-carbon lifestyle choices, which might be as simple as taking public transport, going paperless, or paying bills digitally, and when they accumulate enough points, a real tree is planted on their behalf in reforestation zones across China.
Over eight years, Ant Forest has engaged 650 million users and planted over 600 million real trees. It’s here we see how payment platform power can meet real-world impact:
"Payments create a sweet spot, a connection touchpoint with consumers,” said Leiming Chen. “Ant Forest shows how we can engage consumers at that moment and make sustainability a lifestyle, not a lecture."
The model is now being replicated across our partner markets. For example, GCash in the Philippines has launched G Forest, with other e-wallet partners in Southeast Asia following suit.
Sport as a Cultural Bridge in Sustainability
With all this in mind, Shana Stephenson and Leiming Chen went on to explain how Alipay+’s partnership with the Liberty partnership was no accident. This was a recognition that sport is a cultural bridge that no brand, platform, or financial institution can replicate on its own.
And of course, sport is inherently inclusive by nature-uniting people in ways few platforms can. Liberty's games in Brooklyn bring together fans of all ages, backgrounds, and economic circumstances. The team's community programmes, from court refurbishments, to youth basketball clinics, to outdoor events like Brooklyn Dribble, reach into parts of the New York community that corporate initiatives might not typically access. What Alipay+ strives to do is align with that authentically, commit to the long term and support, and allow the community set the standards.
What we learned from that panel is that sustainability and sport share something essential: both are fundamentally about collective effort, about shared stakes between commercial businesses, sporting institutions, and the fans and consumers around them, and outcomes that matter beyond the individual. When we talk about sponsorship, we don’t mean being adjacent to that dynamic, it’s about being a part of it.
Our sincere thanks go to our esteemed partners Shana Stephenson from New York Liberty, and Li Fan from Nike, for bringing this to life.
