S.L. Benfica sustainability project changing behaviors at scale

Article posted by Coliseum, July 13^th, 2026

Image: Coliseum GSVA

Henrique Conceição does not come from a sustainability background but he is a generalist with a long history with the top-flight Portuguese club S.L. Benfica in different roles and responsibilities.

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Conceição is a management specialist with extensive experience in Marketing and Sales across sports activities. With highly developed problem-solving, leadership, interpersonal, and communication skills he is now focused on Sustainability at S.L. Benfica – acting, leading by example and influencing behaviors.

In an exclusive for ‘Coliseum’, Henrique Conceição, Head of Sustainability, S.L. Benfica, Portugal, shares with Sander van Stiphout, Director, Innovation and Advisory, Johan Cruijff ArenA, Netherlands, the sustainability journey of S.L. Benfica which initially started as an exercise and soon that exercise turned into a strategic goal for the top-tier club. States Conceição, “We want to win for the planet, win for the people and win for the community. We also have to win with transparency, with ethics and with integrity and help the fans develop a sustainability behavior.”

S.L. Benfica

The S.L. Benfica, commonly known as Benfica, is a professional football club based in Lisbon, Portugal, that competes in the Primeira Liga, the top flight of Portuguese football.

Estádio da Luz

The 68,100-seat Estádio da Luz, officially known as the Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica, is a multipurpose stadium located in Lisbon, Portugal. It is used mostly for association football matches and serves as the home field of the S.L. Benfica.

‘Redy – Win in All Fields’

The S.L. Benfica’s sustainability project known as ‘Redy – Win in All Fields’ is a comprehensive Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy that leverages football to create social and environmental impact. The initiative aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets the four key pillars: Operational efficiency, community impact, infrastructure, and transparency.

Environmental, Social and Governance

The Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy is a corporate framework that integrates sustainability and ethical practices into a company’s long-term operations. It helps the organizations measure and manage their impacts – and risks – across three core areas: Planet health, human capital and corporate accountability.

Sustainability Core

Sander van Stiphout wanted to know about the sustainability project and Henrique Conceição informed, “In the beginning it was duplication that was the trigger that made us look to this project but, in fact, duplication became the opportunity to do something different and from the beginning I was passionate about doing work on sustainability. I am in the club for 24 years and doing a little bit of everything regarding commercial and marketing and two years ago the Board invited me to be responsible for this sustainability project – ‘Redy – Win in All Fields’ – and it was really amazing to focus on this important topic. One of the most important topics nowadays is sustainability and for sure this project will give us a really high value.”

van Stiphout mentioned that sustainability was an interesting framework where one is trying to connect all the possible stakeholders within that same framework and making them enthusiastic about sustainability.

Understanding Sustainability

Conceição agreed and stated, “In the beginning when I wanted to understand what was happening regarding sustainability I needed to first look to the fundamentals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the United Nations to the football strategy to understand those 11 policies about human rights and about environmental. I then did deep research to understand what is the framework about sustainability. In the beginning what I did was training a lot of people inside the club. I spoke with more than 90 people in certain different areas to understand what was going on inside the club and I discovered that we were doing very well on sustainability. I have made a library of initiatives on sustainability. More than 80 initiatives on Environmental, Social and Governance in the sustainability areas. If our ‘Redy – Win in All Fields’ project means winning at home because we need the people, the infrastructures and our athletes to win. But we can do it alone so we have the idea that the eco system is really important and we know how important are all the partners, all the sponsors, all the chain value that will help us to reach what we really want because alone we can do nothing but we can do a lot in tandem with our partners, with the eco system working hand in hand with us in this project. It’s about win for many – win for the partners, win for the fans and win for the committee. So, this is the ‘Redy – Win in All Fields’ strategy, this is the strategy that we have defined to work on.”

Sustainability Behavior

Added Conceição, “One of the market studies that we have done was regarding the overall sustainability and the market study revealed that we have more than 26,000 cars going to the stadium – 1.75 people per car. So, this is something we need to solve. It is a huge problem that we have internally in the club. The CO₂ emissions are really high because of that and not talking about the overall operation of the club but we are talking about something like 80 percent of the CO₂ emissions which can be attributed to the supporters and the Members who come to the Estádio da Luz in their cars. We are talking about in a year something about 1,000,600 people that come to the stadium and then go back to their houses. So, this is really one of the most important topics that we need to develop. We cannot tell our supporters or our Members to come by foot or come on a bicycle or to come in an electric car but we can influence them, we can give them different options to develop a different behavior regarding sustainability. So, we are working hard with the City Council, we are working hard with our partners on carpool, giving the supporters and the Members more options in terms of public transport, more options in terms of collective transport. This is one of the most important things that we need to develop in order to decrease our CO₂ emissions.”

Close-up

Sander van Stiphout also mentioned about behavior. He also said about the commercial part like the sustainability partnerships and the sustainability goal and not only a financial transaction.

Henrique Conceição wrapped up by stating, “The ‘Redy – Win in All Fields’ club is like an elite club. What we want to do is welcome those 11 dimensions. We know that it is impossible for us to do all the work alone. So, we know that if we have the help of the eco system to help us on those 11 dimensions we can do a really good work. We need the sponsors and the partners to help us on ethics, integrity and transparency. If we manage to find the correct partners to help us on this purpose of elevating those different 11 dimensions I am sure we will do something different in terms of sustainability – not just on the environmental side but also on the social and the governance side. So, this is a huge project that we need to develop internally that will help us to do it in a different way, with a different purpose because it’s not just a matter of acting, it’s not just a matter of leading by example, it’s a matter of changing behaviors because you know the clubs have that capacity of picking the megaphone and amplify a message. It is all about changing behaviors at scale.”

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