Fossil Fuel Floods a Rugby Stadium in Powerful Greenpeace Spot 'A Dirty Game'

The global fossil fuel industry extracts enough oil to fill a rugby stadium every 3 hours and 37 minutes, according to a powerful new animated video released today by Greenpeace France. 

Together with production company Studio Birthplace, represented by Park Village in the UK, Greenpeace France created the video to campaign against fossil fuel sponsorship of major sporting events like the Rugby World Cup 2023, which this year is sponsored by French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies.

Edina Ifticene, campaigner at Greenpeace France, said, “Integrity, passion, solidarity, discipline and respect - those are rugby values. But fossil fuel companies like TotalEnergies piggyback those values by sponsoring popular sports events like the Rugby World Cup, to distract everyone from their climate destruction. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies won’t stop extracting fossil fuels - even though they know it’s jeopardising a livable future for us all - because they like the record-breaking profits they’re making.” 

But the Rugby World Cup Limited tried to block the release of the video with a cease and desist letter sent to Greenpeace International on Tuesday 29 August - the day before the video was due to go public. 

In response, Edina Ifticene, campaigner from Greenpeace France, said, “The Rugby World Cup has sent Greenpeace International a legal letter to try to force it not to publish our video. But we won’t be silenced. Fossil fuel companies like TotalEnergies sponsor events like the Rugby World Cup to distract everyone from their climate destruction. The fossil-fuelled climate crisis has already started to negatively impact rugby itself: a typhoon disrupted the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan, and major Pacific Island rugby nations are threatened by rising sea levels. And some of France’s host cities have decided to keep TotalEnergies out of their fan zones. Everyone is waking up to the fact that there is no place for fossil fuels, not in rugby, or anywhere else. We will not be stopped from calling out the truth and will release the video.”

The animated 60-second film, ‘TotalPollution: A Dirty Game’, digitally fills up the Stade De France - the stadium in Paris where the first match between France and the New Zealand All Blacks will take place on 8 September - with the amount of crude oil that the global fossil fuel industry collectively produces in three hours and 37 minutes. That’s more than six and a half stadiums worth of oil every 24 hours.

The video features voice-overs from Irish comedian and actor Seán Burke and French comedian and radio columnist Guillaume Meurice. In slapstick fashion, the animated video shows oil spilling out of TotalEnergies logos dotted around the stadium, knocking over the rugby players and fans in their seats, who are represented by mannequins. The last 10 seconds of the video features footage of real climate destruction caused both directly and indirectly by the fossil fuel industry. 

TotalEnergies’ chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné said when the sponsorship was announced, “Integrity, passion, solidarity, discipline and respect are key features of this sport, and they match our company’s values [...] more importantly, rugby is organised first and foremost around a team, just like TotalEnergies: a collective of women and men committed to the energy transition.”

But it’s not the case that fossil fuel companies are genuinely committed to shifting to renewable energy; a Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe report released last week, which analysed the 2022 annual reports of six global fossil fuel majors and six European oil and gas companies, revealed that a minuscule 0.3% of their combined energy production came from renewable power. According to the report, 99% of TotalEnergies’ energy production last year came from fossil fuels, meaning only 1% came from genuinely renewable sources. These sponsorships are a strategic pillar in the oil and gas majors plans to, not just continue with its operations, but also to expand them despite the climate crisis.

Edina Ifticene continued: “We want a complete ban on fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship of major sporting events. It benefits no one but fossil fuel companies, and deliberately distracts everyone from the environmental destruction they cause and the communities they harm. For a safer and fairer world, we must end the fossil fuel era, starting with climate-wrecking new fossil fuel projects, before it’s too late.”

Film directors Jorik Dozy and Sil van der Woerd from Studio Birthplace said: “By making this film, we wanted to shine a light on the tremendous scale of global crude oil production, and expose the worrying rate at which we are continuing to fuel our climate crisis. We're all in the middle of a climate emergency, so it's essential to keep telling stories about the insidiousness of fossil fuels - and how they are ruining the planet for everyone.”

EP, Adam Booth from Park Village, “When Greenpeace approached us with such an ambitious brief, to hold accountable the major sponsor of one of the sporting world’s most iconic international events, we knew it would have significant impact. Having produced a similarly impactful awareness campaign previously for Greenpeace, we know how effective these messages can be in building public perception around major players in the climate crisis. Studio Birthplace came up with another incredible concept, putting heart and soul into the production of the intricate VFX across a compressed timeline and budget, resulting in an overwhelming film and AR output. We’re continually very proud of our work with them ”.