Sustainable energy transitions in sports tourism: bridging infrastructure investment and event legacy planning

How do people come to care about the environmental footprint of the places where they cheer, compete, and celebrate? This conceptual analysis argues that the answer lies not in information alone but in what bodies feel. Sustainable energy transitions in sports tourism venues—geothermal heating that steadies the air, solar arrays that reshape rooflines, natural ventilation that reconnects indoor arenas with the outdoors—alter the sensory fabric of sporting spaces in ways that generate distinctive emotional responses: comfort, pride, hope, and sometimes moral dissonance. Drawing on phenomenological theories of embodiment, the sociology of emotion in sport, and the concept of affective atmospheres, we develop the Embodied Sustainable Sports Experience (ESSE) Framework. The ESSE Framework maps three interconnected layers—somatic encounter, affective response, and identity-behavior translation—through which bodily experiences of green infrastructure may catalyze engagement with climate action. We illustrate the framework through conceptual application to mega-event legacies and national energy transitions in Central Asia, arguing that emerging sports tourism destinations hold particular promise for embedding sustainability into the lived, felt texture of sporting life. This analysis contributes to the interdisciplinary dialogue on how sport—as a uniquely embodied and emotionally charged domain of human experience—can move people toward environmental consciousness and action.