A free public event for 16,000 people in the heart of London, impact tracked from start to finish.
Red Bull · Alexandra Palace · London, UK · 2024 · Sport and live events · Consultancy
Since 2024 Pie Factory has worked with Red Bull UK and Ireland across their flagship sporting events, from the near-vertical descents of Hardline in the Dyfi Valley to motocross on the Tyne and drift racing on Spike Island. The Soapbox Race is the largest of them by audience. Red Bull wanted to know the real impact of an event of that scale, not an estimate, and wanted the answer in a form that could change how the next one was produced.
Pie Factory worked on the ground across the event, gathering primary data from 40 suppliers, 17 food concessions and 75 Red Bull staff, then building the footprint from source data rather than benchmarks. Eight categories were measured: food, logistics, travel, accommodation, on-site machinery, energy, waste and water, each traced to its own activity data. Supplier sustainability was assessed, suppliers were upskilled in sustainable event delivery, a carbon tracking tool was built to automate the calculation for future events, and Red Bull’s sustainable event guidelines were tested to embed the findings at every stage of production.
A live event on this scale has many moving parts, large amounts of stakeholders and a huge audience to coordinate and entertain, all whilst following ambitious sustainability guidelines and targets. Pie Factory worked with the Red Bull team to engage with stakeholders well ahead of the event and eliminate sustainability risk wherever possible, ensuring that all data was captured to allow for accurate reporting and lessons to be learnt.
Engaging 40+ suppliers over 2 months and spending 2 full days on site, the Pie Factory team worked alongside Red Bull without getting in the way, providing recommendations along the way and accurately tracking all sustainability impact data required for the client’s corporate sustainability reporting.