As Kendrick Nunn capped off a comeback for the ages with a thunderous left-handed dunk, sending the Berlin crowd into raptures and sealing Panathinaikos’ first EuroLeague title for 13 years against reigning champions Real Madrid, the headlines were already being written. Greek basketball was back.

Two months later, the men’s national team, led by two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, qualified for Paris 2024 ­– the team’s first Olympics since 2008 – where they were knocked out in the quarterfinals with their heads held high against reigning FIBA world champions Germany.

Since taking charge of the national team in 2023, the sense of team spirit and togetherness under Vassilis Spanoulis that shined on the world stage this summer hasn’t been a secret. Players, staff and fans alike have all sensed a different air around the team compared to much of the 16 years between Olympics appearances, but this revival is no coincidence. Ever since Evangelos Liolios was elected president of the Hellenic Basketball Federation (HBF) in 2021, coherency off the court has become a staple of the federation, particularly regarding social and environmental responsibility.

Zacharias Stagakis, head of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at HBF, declares to The Sustainability Report that they are the only federation under FIBA’s umbrella with a concrete strategy and specific department to address environmental issues in basketball. HBF is also the first national basketball federation and FIBA member to participate in the UN’s Sports for Climate Action Framework.

This led to HBF producing a 2023 Environmental Impact Report, where learnings have been incorporated into its Social and Environmental Responsibility Strategy 2024-2028.

Starting lineup

Zacharias studied Sport Management, Politics and International Development at Loughborough University, going on to help organise international basketball events as an executive consultant for the Cretan Basketball Teams Union (EKASK) and using sport to promote societal and environmental issues. In 2021, EKASK became the first Greek sports organisation to participate in the UN’s Sports for Climate Action Framework.

It was during this embryonic period of Liolios’ presidency that he learned about EKASK’s activities, offering Zacharias the opportunity to “create a platform for social and environmental change utilising basketball” and establish a HBF CSR department in 2022, branded HBF Plus+.

Zacharias is convinced that “nothing could have happened” concerning social and environmental responsibility if it wasn’t for Liolios, who is also a FIBA Foundation board member. The FIBA Foundation’s structural guidance and the support of partners have also been crucial to not only help HBF develop a strategy, but initiate tangible action.

One of these partners is the consultancy The Sports Footprint, founded by Ioannis Konstantopoulos. Like Zacharias, Ioannis earned a master’s degree in Sport Management and was drawn into the fledgling field of sport sustainability.

Ioannis tells The Sustainability Report that the lack of experts with technical knowledge, particularly in Greece, capable of applying technical environmental skills to sport was immediately obvious. Since 2022, The Sports Footprint has aimed to rectify that.  

“The case of the Hellenic Basketball Federation is quite peculiar for Greece,” Ioannis remarks. He explains that important decisions have traditionally been made by top management, but Liolios – a doctor, businessman and mastermind behind Promitheas Patras’ rise through Greece’s regional divisions to compete against Olympiacos and Panathinaikos – was more open-minded to trusting younger generations. On average, Ioannis believes youngsters are more sensitive to environmental issues like climate change and handle the topic in a more professional manner.

The gameplan

Developed over eight months, the Social and Environmental Responsibility Strategy 2024-2028 is comprised of four pillars that HBF has mapped onto the Sustainable Development Goals:

– Equality and inclusion

– Health and well-being

– Human and children’s rights

– Action for the environment

In 2022, HBF established the first official partnership between a FIBA federation and UNICEF, aiming to eliminate violence and discrimination in basketball. In fact, HBF is the first Greek sports federation to develop a policy that ensures the protection of adults and children from all forms of violence and harassment.

The federation will support other Greek sport organisations to follow suit and develop such policies and strategies that address the four pillars by producing a digital platform with freely available information covering training, promotion, partnerships and incentives.

Zacharias explains that education and support should be prioritised for stakeholders to not only understand what HBF is doing, but why. “Only then can we bring new people into the sport sustainability community.” With this mindset, Ioannis believes he has found the “one good example” for the Greek sports industry he has sought to lead the way regarding sustainability.

“I’m very proud of what we developed,” says Zacharias. “If you compare the strategy with bigger organisations, I don’t think we are missing anything. We are on the right side of history, which gave us a lot of motivation, but also a huge responsibility.”

Bench spark

HBF aren’t starting from square one with HBF Plus+. Shortly after establishing The Sports Footprint, Ioannis was surprised by the number of Greek organisations that requested a meeting to discuss sport sustainability.

Despite lacking human and financial resources, ­some were already undertaking environmental initiatives, like Panathinaikos F.C. keeping bees at its training ground to produce organic honey. “They thought that this was their duty,” Ioannis says, “not for marketing or branding, but because they believed it was the right thing to do.”

“I was amazed,” Zacharias describes after finding that even basketball teams from small towns made specific suggestions to incorporate the Social and Environmental Responsibility Strategy 2024-2028 into their structure. “That is getting very close to what we are aiming to do,” he continues, “which is to enable the basketball society to think outside the box and there being more to do except just playing basketball.”

The interest in HBF’s environmental activities became apparent when the federation introduced the Social and Environmental Responsibility Strategy 2024-2028 at a public event attended by 150 people. Rather than merely publishing a document disclosing the federation’s intentions, Zacharias believes that gathering different stakeholders and partners at such an event “shows how things should be done” to coordinate sustainability efforts.

In in his two years as HBF’s CSR director, Zacharias hasn’t seen an event away from the basketball court with as much interest, which was also recognised by his peers working for other departments within the federation. Ever since, the event has been a catalyst for Zacharias to “utilise momentum and proceed in a very concrete manner.”

Travel violation

Prior to the 2004 Athens Olympics, efficient public transport services were absent from Greece’s capital. The Games brought significant improvements to the city’s public transport system, including the expansion of the metro and reducing traffic congestion, but research published in the 2023 Environmental Impact Report found that 21.8% of HBF’s emissions were produced from employee travel, with 70% of that generated from cars.

HBF will educate employees to raise environmental awareness and highlight incentives for public transport and car sharing, but perhaps the latter is the more likely alternative. In addition to a few small railway lines around the capital, just one main line exists in Greece between Athens and the country’s second city Thessaloniki. In February 2023, the deadliest rail disaster in Greek history occurred on this line, leading to 57 people losing their lives and decimating what little trust existed in the public rail system.

For a country located beyond Central Europe that hasn’t been financially robust for years, that leaves air travel as the only practical international travel option. “That’s the reality,” adds Zacharias.

94.9% of HBF’s carbon footprint in 2023 was composed of Scope 3 emissions. 70.1% of that consisted of transporting the men’s and women’s national teams, as well as federation representatives, via 65% long distance flights and 31% short distance. 

While Greece’s biggest teams that compete on a regional or national level can avoid flying by using buses or boats, Zacharias points out that “it’s not easy to motivate high-profile players to travel by bus,” but reiterates that HBF will push to implement sustainable travel solutions wherever possible to reduce reliance on short distance flights.

Full-court vision

At the beginning of June, HBF hosted an Olympics Qualifying Tournament (OQT) in Pireaus where Greece beat Croatia in front of a jubilant home crowd to qualify for Paris 2024. Three other OQT’s were held around the world, but Piraeus was the only one to implement social and environmental actions away from the hardwood. This included a special model basketball court for visually impaired people to haptically follow Greece’s match against Egypt, where Greek basketball legend Nick Galis also participated.

The federation also conducted an extensive recycling study in collaboration with the Hellenic Recovery Recycling Corporation. 130 blue recycling bins were placed in accessible locations for athletes, spectators and staff both inside and outside the Peace and Friendship Stadium, producing results of this kind for the first time at a large-scale event held in Greece:

– 3,790kg of material was collected in the blue bins over nine days, of which 2,940kg was sent for recycling.

– 830kg was paper packaging (22%), an amount equivalent to avoiding the felling of 10 trees.

– 1,760kg was plastic packaging (46%), reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing new plastic by 1,000kg.

– 350kg was aluminium packaging (9%), equivalent to avoiding the extraction of 1,000kg of bauxite and the use of 200kg of oil for its production.

– 23% of collected material was non-recyclable, showing the importance of continuing these actions to raise awareness among fans.

In 2023, HBF presented its CSR practices to all European FIBA federations at a FIBA sustainability workshop in Munich. Both Zacharias and Ioannis think FIBA have lagged behind other big international sports federations in terms of environmental sustainability, but Zacharias believes that HBF’s activities combined with Liolios’ participation on the FIBA Foundation board has helped FIBA to recognise that “there should be a new formula” to make sustainability a mandatory element of event hosting.

Title contenders

HBF’s presidential election takes place next month, where it’s widely assumed that Liolios will be re-elected. Zacharias believes that once this result is official, Liolios’ CSR vision will only accelerate, remarking that “there are huge things for us to do.” One such ‘huge thing’ could be hosting EuroBasket 2029, which the federation is rumoured to be interested in after the success of this year’s OQT.

If the speculation is true and said bid is successful, EuroBasket 2029 may represent the pinnacle of what HBF’s Social and Environmental Responsibility Strategy 2024-2028 can achieve; proof that separating what happens on and off the court cannot be defended.  

“I have to congratulate both our sides [HBF and The Sports Footprint] because we have honest collaboration,” Zacharias smiles. “I’m not claiming that everything will happen in the next one or two years, but in the next five years of basketball, I think that the Hellenic Basketball Federation is the federation that will lead the way on sustainability.”