Sports venues are erected to enable amateur and professional athletes to pursue their sport in a functional and regulation-compliant manner. Sports facilities should also be safe, modern, attractive and multi-functional so as to meet the various needs of their users.

Yet sports facilities have an influence that exceeds the sport itself: Their construction requires large quantities of materials such as gravel, concrete, and steel. Some of the environmental effects of merely producing such materials are significant and the operation of such sports facilities, usually designed to run for decades, also has ecological effects: Old-fashioned, inefficient lighting or heating systems, for example, produce high levels of emissions and, considering the growing costs of energy, incur huge costs.

From an environmental point of view, it is paramount for the material and energy consumption involved in erecting sports facilities to be kept as low as possible. Therefore, durable, recyclable construction materials, with low levels of harmful substances, should be used. Efficient facility technology should be employed. Temporary constructions such as spectator terraces, which can be dismantled and reused elsewhere, also play an important role.