Chip Ganassi Racing Joins the Founding Circle of the GOAL Sustainability Movement

INDIANAPOLIS (March 30, 2023) – Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) today joined a collective of major venues in sports and live entertainment across the globe as a member of the Founding Circle for the industry-wide GOAL sustainability platform to champion social impact, climate action, and responsible change.  

GOAL, which was founded in October 2022 by Oak View Group (OVG), the Atlanta Hawks & State Farm Arena, Fenway Sports Group, and green building expert Jason F. McLennan, will provide venues at different points in their sustainability journeys with tactical roadmaps, easy-to-use tracking tools, a library of resources and case studies, and access to like-minded, leading operators, vendors, and solution-providers, all committed to operating more sustainably, more urgently.

Founding Circle venues, representing legendary teams and iconic places of mass assembly, are committed to leading, learning, collaborating, and, in all cases, making a positive impact on their communities and for the planet.  In addition to tracking their own climate adaptation and mitigation progress, the group will help beta test the GOAL Platform, ensuring that the online tool and facilitated collaboration opportunities is designed for operators, by operators.

Chip Ganassi Racing is the first motorsports organization to join GOAL's Founding Circle.

“Joining GOAL is the latest step in our company’s efforts to establish a motorsports industry-standard for measuring and reducing our carbon footprint,” Chip Ganassi, Owner and CEO of Chip Ganassi Racing, said. “We’re committed to emerging as leaders of authentic sustainable action and look forward to leveraging the GOAL Network to equip us throughout our sustainability journey.”

The Founding Circle members represent different sports, different geographies, and different building types of varying sizes and ages, ensuring that the input and feedback is worthy of the diversity of the live entertainment and hospitality industry. Some venues are already leading the way when it comes to climate action, and others are just beginning their respective journeys. But in all cases, these venues are action-oriented, climate-minded, and understand the urgency required to address a changing planet.

CGR joins initial Founding Circle members that were announced in October 2022: Acrisure Arena (Greater Palm Springs, CA), Budweiser Gardens (London, ON), Citi Field (New York, NY), Climate Pledge Arena (Seattle, WA), Co-op Live (Manchester, UK), Fenway Sports Group (Boston, MA), Footprint Center (Phoenix, AZ), FTX Arena (Miami, FL), Gainbridge Fieldhouse (Indianapolis, IN), Levi’s® Stadium (Santa Clara, CA), Moda Center (Portland, OR), Moody Center at University of Texas Austin (Austin, TX), Mullett Arena at Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ), PPG Paints Arena (Pittsburgh, PA), Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse (Cleveland, OH), State Farm Arena (Atlanta, GA), UBS Arena (Belmont Park, NY).

“Our Founding Circle partners are some of the most influential and forward-thinking venues across the sports, live entertainment and convention industry,” Chris Granger, president of OVG360, said.  “I applaud Chip Ganassi Racing for their leadership, for their spirit of collaboration, and for their understanding of the urgency demanded by climate change. I look forward to working with Chip Ganassi and his team, learning from them, and sharing the very best ideas and best practices with our industry as we race against the clock, together.”

Kristen Fulmer, OVG’s sustainability director, added: “We are beta testing the platform with our inspiring roster of Founding Circle members, and will now open additional venues to join the movement. We want to right-size the platform to make sure that the data points and thresholds for leadership meet venues anywhere along their sustainability journey, engaging – and without shaming – venues that are just getting started, while also enhancing efforts in venues that already make an impact in a variety of different topics, from waste diversion, to water conservation, to improved indoor air quality.” 

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About GOAL   

GOAL, which stands for Green Operations & Advanced Leadership, is a sustainability program for arenas, stadiums, convention centers, and other types of public assembly venues in the sports and entertainment industry. Members of GOAL will have access to a digital portal that defines a broad set of sustainability standards specifically designed for venues, a tactical roadmap for achieving those standards, and a customized tracking tool. The online platform includes a library of resources and provides a forum to collaborate with like-minded operators, vendors, and sponsors who are committed to operating more sustainably. The GOAL membership portal is powered by software developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and modeled after the industry-leading work at the Oak View Group owned-and-operated Climate Pledge Arena. Venues can regularly track their performance against scientifically backed standards in ESG categories – such as energy and water use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste management, indoor air quality, and health and wellbeing – as well as compare to similarly situated venues and be recognized for their progress. The Founding Partners of GOAL are Oak View Group, the Atlanta Hawks & State Farm Arena, Fenway Sports Group, and green building trailblazer Jason F. McLennan, founder of McLennan Design. For more information, visit www.GOALstandard.com or contact info@GOALstandard.com.  

About Chip Ganassi Racing

Chip Ganassi has been a fixture in the auto racing industry for over 30 years and is considered one of the most successful and innovative owners in motorsports. Today, his teams include four Honda cars in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, one Cadillac V-Series.R in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, one Cadillac V-Series.R in the World Endurance Champions and one GMC HUMMER EV in Extreme E. Overall, his teams have 21 championships and more than 240 victories, including five wins in the Indianapolis 500, eight Rolex 24 At Daytona victories, and wins in the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ganassi boasts state-of-the-art facilities in Indianapolis, where INDYCAR, IMSA, WEC and Extreme E teams are located, and a corporate office in Pittsburgh. For more information, visit ChipGanassiRacing.com.