Euroleague Basketball joined forces with several partners to ensure that the 2023 Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Final Four continued promoting sustainability education and initiatives for the participants and visitors to Kaunas for the games. The final result left its mark on the city.
One of the main programs was the Final Four Walking Challenge. Organized in conjunction with the Lithuania-based app #walk15, the goal was to encourage more people to walk around the city to reduce carbon emissions as well as to plant at least 5,000 trees, which come on top of the 10,000 trees Euroleague Basketball already planted during a ceremony on May 6. Together, that took to project to 15,000 trees, which matched the capacity of Zalgirio Arena for the Final Four. In practice, the program surpassed that benchmark; 7,332 people participated and walked 229,417,951 steps in total.
On May 21, the first of the 5,735 trees from the Final Four Walking Challenge were planted as part of a community celebration with the Final Four Steps Forest. The City of Kaunas, Final Four Ambassador Patrick Femerling, Zalgiris Kaunas player Keenan Evans, the Lithuanians Forestry Office and #walk15 took part in the event. As part of its sustainable mobility goal, the walking challenge also promoted the use of the extra trains and buses scheduled for the Final Four instead cars to get to Kaunas and altogether, the app use resulted in 29,473 kilograms of carbon emissions avoided.