Dodgers: End your sponsorship deal with big oil giant Phillips 66 NOW!

The Los Angeles Dodgers are a beloved, championship baseball team but their sponsorship deal with oil giant Phillips 66 must end immediately. It's greenwashing of the worst kind. Please read our Open Letter urging the team to ditch the greenwashing and do the right thing.

To: Mark Walter, owner, Los Angeles Dodgers

Re: End the Los Angeles Dodgers Sponsorship Deal with Phillips 66 Brand 76

Dear Mr. Walter:

We, the undersigned, ask you to immediately end the Los Angeles Dodgers' sponsorship deal with Phillips 66, owner of the 76 gas-station brand, whose logo and ads are emblazoned throughout Dodger Stadium.

Climate change threatens the very fate of civilization and all living things. Big Oil is a major contributor to this threat and to the pollution that kills millions of people yearly. Yet, it has engaged in decades of climate denial and greenwashing, even as carbon emissions keep rising.

Using tactics such as associating a beloved, trusted brand like the Dodgers with enterprises like 76, the fossil fuel industry has reinforced deceitful messages that "oil is our friend," and that "climate change isn’t so bad."  

It is that bad. With record-breaking temperatures reminding us of fossil fuels' lethal effects, António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, has called on all countries to ban fossil fuel advertising. California attorney general Rob Bonta is suing oil and gas conglomerates--Phillips 66 included--for disinformation campaigns designed to conceal and mislead the public about the catastrophic health and environmental damage resulting from the use of their products.

This moment offers the Dodgers a new opportunity to lead. The team, whose association with Phillips 66 and its predecessors dates back decades, can maintain the status quo, mimicking other teams backed by Big Oil. It can continue to make a fossil fuel brand, the sort associated with deadly fires, floods and air pollution that causes cancer and respiratory disease, seem as wholesome as one of America's favorite pastimes. Or the Dodgers can drop their dangerous greenwashing, reinforcing Los Angeles' standing as one of the most innovative cities in the world, a city that has put forth powerful goals and policies to fight climate change and protect human health and fragile ecosystems. 

The Dodgers broke the segregation barrier by signing Jackie Robinson nearly 80 years ago, helping to propel integration. Pioneering former owner, Walter O'Malley, brought baseball to the West Coast, moving the team from Brooklyn to L.A., where the Boys in Blue became a symbol of California’s progressive, inclusive culture. In ensuing years, even as California became the fifth largest economy in the world, L.A.'s skies become bluer and our children endured fewer unhealthy air days, thanks to local and state environmental regulations that have led the nation.

This team has openly acknowledged the need to act on pollution and climate change, recently partnering on a project that brought solar and EV charging to Compton's Gonzales Park, whose baseball stadium bears Robinson's name. It has partnered with Major League Baseball and its own charity, the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation, on such other sustainability efforts as recycling, food donations and stormwater collection. 

Unfortunately, the Dodgers Foundation, which has spent millions on programs helping youth, has also engaged in greenwashing, just this spring hosting health and education events for kids, at Gonzales Park, sponsored by the ARCO gas station chain. This amounts to "a scheme to make us forget that fossil fuels are terrible for our health, even as their fumes scar our lungs and roast the planet," as The Los Angeles Times recently wrote. ARCO is owned by oil giant Marathon Petroleum, which has a part interest in the Dakota Access Pipeline that's been the target of national outrage over the dangers of fossil fuels and unjust treatment of indigenous peoples for nearly a decade. 

We urge the Dodgers Foundation to immediately cease its shameful greenwashing. We urge the Dodgers organization to drop its Phillips 66 sponsorship and reject any fossil fuel sponsorships. All of this would tell the world it's time to stop giving cover to producers of climate chaos, deadly pollution and biodiversity loss. It would tell the world it's time to champion clean energy as we move together toward a sustainable, healthy future for Los Angeles and the world.

Lives depend on it.