MAJOR football broadcasters including the BBC, Sky Sports and Premier League Productions visited Forest Green Rovers to find out how to make sports broadcasting more sustainable.

Monday's meeting, hosted by chairman Dale Vince and chief executive Helen Taylor, included a tour of The New Lawn, a vegan lunch and a discussion on the sustainability challenges of outside sports broadcasting.

Dale said: “I think the big, unique challenge for outside broadcasting is power, as they have generators running all day to make sure they’re independent from the grid in case of power cuts – and I think we can do something about that.

“They’re going to give us some data – what a typical matchday looks like in terms of power consumption and we're going to come up with a solution that involves batteries.”

Sky arranged the meeting after hearing Dale speak at the British Association for Sustainable Sport Conference last year.

He added: “We’re all about sustainability - we’ve been promoting that to our fans and we knew that other clubs would pick it up, and we went to speak to the UN about that last autumn which was really quite special.

“To have broadcasters come along – I hadn’t really expected it - but I think it shows you how far sustainability is going, it’s reaching everywhere.”