Sport England and Facebook are today
announcing a new partnership to help deliver a lasting Olympic
legacy of more people playing sport.
It’s the first long-term partnership between
Facebook and a government or public body in the U.K. – and will use
the social networking site’s unrivalled influence to bring people
together around sport, and transform the way sports bodies reach
out to the public in the run up to London 2012.
Central to the new partnership is the Facebook
‘Sport Hub’ which enables national governing bodies of sport (NGBs)
to engage with over 20 million people who use Facebook in the UK,
and which will provide tangible measurement of the number of
participants reached through the ‘Sport Hub’.
The ‘Hub’ looks and feels like a Facebook fan
page but offers innovative and exclusive new applications, enabling
sports bodies to organise and market grassroots sports events.
Facebook users will be able to challenge other people in their area
to compete against them – whether in a squash match or a running
race – and then share the results with their Facebook friends and
networks.
The partnership is worth up to £20 million,
with Facebook providing an in-kind investment of £5 million a year
until March 2013, which will cover the development of the ‘Sport
Hub’, as well as pound-for-pound matched advertising spend on
Facebook for brands and NGBs to use Facebook ads to encourage
people to play more sport.
Students and young people who use Facebook
will be the first to benefit - starting at this year’s university
freshers’ week. Sport England is piloting the scheme through
British Universities & Colleges Sport and six sports. The pilot
has an ambitious target to get 12,000 students participating in
sport in just four months.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and
Sport, Ben Bradshaw MP, said:
“Facebook has a unique ability to reach
millions of people, young and increasingly not so young. Many of
them will not regard sport as part of their daily lives at the
moment, but this pioneering and exciting new partnership
between the social marketing website, Sport England and sports’
governing bodies could change all that. This is a valuable way of
making sure that as many people as possible know about the huge
range of activities, initiatives and facilities we have in this
country – so there is no excuse not to get active.”
Facebook’s Vice-President of Sales, EMEA,
Blake Chandlee, said:
“Millions of people in the UK are already
using Facebook to connect to their friends and organise events
around things that matter to them, including sport. By cleverly
leveraging Facebook’s tools and advertising programmes to get more
people into sport, Sport England is using our social tool as a tool
for social change.”
Richard Lewis, Sport England’s Chair,
said:
“This partnership with Facebook will
fundamentally change the way sports engage with participants,
helping them to reach out beyond existing club structures to the
young people who are the future of sport. Four out of five
youngsters have a Facebook account, so this is a key way for us to
make sport a part of more people’s lives.”
Sport England is working to attract £50
million of commercial value into grassroots sport by 2013. Facebook
is the first of a number of top level partnerships which Sport
England is aiming to create over the next four years.
Ends
Notes to editors
The Sport England/Facebook
partnership
Facebook is offering an in-kind investment of
£5 million a year until March 2013. The investment covers
developing, training and hosting the Sport Hub for national
governing bodies of sport (NGBs), conducting online polling,
official partnership status with permission to use the Facebook
brand in advertising and communications as well as pound-for-pound
matched advertising spend, on Facebook, for brands seeking to
encourage people to play more sport (capped at £3 million a
year).
Facts about the benefits of using Facebook to
promote sports participation:
- Online reach: 20m active users and second
most trafficked site in the UK (Source: Hitwise)
- Engaged audience: 50% return everyday &
spend 25 mins on the site. Facebook is part of the daily routine
for people, who use the site to connect and share about things that
interest them, including sport
- Unrivaled insights on users, group members,
custom communities etc. Access to polling / survey tools to gain a
deeper understanding of audience and activities
Sport England
Sport England invests National Lottery and
Exchequer funding in organisations and projects that will grow and
sustain participation in grassroots sport and create opportunities
for people to excel at their chosen sport.
Sport England is committed to creating a
world-leading community sport system, and has set specific and
measurable targets to achieve by 2012/13:
- One million people doing more sport
- A 25% reduction in the number of 16- to 18-year-olds who drop
out of at least five key sports
- Improved talent development systems in at least 25 sports
- A measurable increase in people’s satisfaction with their
experience of sport
- A major contribution to the delivery of the five hour sports
offer for children and young people.
British Universities & Colleges
Sport (BUCS)
British Universities & Colleges Sport is
the national organisation for higher education sport in the UK. It
represents 150 universities and colleges and manages the
development and competition programme for 50 sports. For more
information, go to BUCS'
website or join their Facebook page
The governing bodies of six sports are working
with BUCS to deliver the first phase of the programme. They are:
athletics, badminton, volleyball, judo, table tennis, squash and
racketball.