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We have seen many examples where sports clubs have benefitted in terms of membership and income from playing a stronger role in their communities. And with a stronger focus on sport’s ability to change people’s lives, there is an even stronger scope for sports clubs to play a bigger role in their communities and the lives of people around them and become #MoreThanAClub.
Also as sports clubs must develop a sustainable income model – getting away from the panicky Dash for Cash, literally begging for money. The key is to look at the whole operation and ambition of your club and then identify and implement projects which can help grow your income to match your requirements.
It is key to integrate the sporting aspects and ambitions and your income generation as you must ensure that all your club’s operations are financially sustainable.
That will also be helped by becoming a hub for your community as more people will take an interest in your club and want to support you and take part in your activities and events.
This webinar will give you
Thoughts, Tools, and To-dos on how
you can utilise your community involvement to help grow
your income from online shopping.
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The Danish Football Association (DBU) launches a campaign to improve parent, coach and spectator behaviour and language at community and junior football matches.
Seven out of ten referees at youth and non-league football matches in Denmark have experienced abusive behaviour and language over the last two years (something we fear is far too common across the world, hence why there is a shortage of qualified officials at many football leagues. There are community leagues in the UK where 40% of matches will not have accredited referees.
In England, 93.7% of match officials say they have experienced verbal abuse – higher than other sports such as cricket (56.5%) and rugby union (53.7%), and significantly higher than in other European countries.
Abuse is still a significant issue, probably the biggest in refereeing. Mental health within referees is intrinsically tied to abuse. According to the Football Association, which governs the game in England, assaults occur in 0.007% of matches, approximately two a week.
The player who committed the assault received just a warning from police after being given a 10-year ban by the local football association.
Police say they issued the caution after careful consideration, but Toki believes there is an element of racial discrimination to the decision as attacks on white officials have led to assault charges and court proceedings.
Further outrage from Toki’s assault ensued when, upon appeal, the perpetrator of the vicious attack had his FA playing ban reduce by half, to five years. This left many referees feeling incredibly uneasy about going out to officiate at a time when Toki’s assault was on the front and back pages and there was a multitude of other attacks taking place, such another in the same week which left a referee with a perforated eardrum. Many officials said it did not sit right with them that criminals were being allowed to play again sooner, with a groundswell of opinion amongst referees that assaults on match officials should lead to a lifetime ban from football before a referee is killed.
That was was the case in Holland where 41-year-old Richard Nieuwenhuizen was kicked to death by six teenagers and the father of one of the boys when operating as an assistant referee.
Most of the terms used by the spectators whether in Denmark, England or somewhere else we can not print here, but I am sure we have are all aware of them or have indeed heard them ourselves.
Foul language must be kicked out
The Danish Råb Pænt campaign gives a strong hint to players, coaches, spectators and refs to stop using foul language and cheer on the matches using some more encouraging terms.
Bent Clausen, vice-chair of DBU says:
The campaign includes a video that, in a slightly humorous way show that you can use an acceptable language jgarjgrjgrejgretjgertjgtej
There is also a competition where you can win a shirt signed by the Danish national team and tickets for a Danish international match.
You have come up with something humourous that Danish international goalkeeper, Peter Schmeichel could be saying when he is facing a penalty-taker!
The Danish FA puts much emphasis on improving the culture within the clubs and show respect for officials, opponents and everyone else that come to the club. Coaches, committee members and other volunteers should play a key role in developing a more friendly, respectful and welcoming culture all across the club.
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Introducing Facility Enterprise for community sports clubs and facilities
Asset transfer is a growing phenomenon…but not everybody should do it!
Asset transfers of community buildings and sports facilities have taken place across the UK for a few years now. In many cases, they have gone well and many community groups and sports clubs now run their own facilities and can grow their impact in the community.
Some are in a brilliant state, well-maintained and generating income to help for the upkeep of the facility and the running of the clubs. However, there are, unfortunately. also, too many sports facilities, which are in a bad state of repair, being left to the elements and not a place where no one, apart from the club diehards, wants to spend any time.
So, this can be a daunting task for people who normally are volunteers with little experience in fundraising, planning laws, budgeting and the dozens of aspects involved with developing your community sports facility.
Unfortunately, we have seen too many examples where these developments don’t go to plan, in some cases with dire consequences:
Over the years, Sports Marketing Network has worked with probably more community sports facilities than most other people and we have seen some fantastic places, where the clubs/centres can maintain and develop their facilities through strong management and enterprise.
Svend started the webinar by defining sports facility management as overseeing and managing leisure centres, gyms, or other sports facilities, such as practice courts, swimming pools, etc.
Common duties will typically include preparing current financials for the owner of the facility, managing staff and inventory, as well as ordering supplies, equipment and scheduled maintenance or repairs.
He then presented this slide
This slide highlights how important innovation and community engagement is for developing and delivering a really great and financially sustainable sports facility.
That is highlighted in this slide which highlights the importance for your facility to be that hub for the community where community groups, institutions, authorities and so on partner up with your facility and all parties benefit from sharing values and links.
Sport and our facilities must create shared value with its communities
Shared Value for sports clubs and other activity providers can be defined as a new kind of partnership, in which both the club and the community contribute directly to the strengthening and development of each other.
Any centre/club that wants to share value with its community must open up the club and the way it operates to people from outside its ‘inner circle’. By gradually engaging with new groups and institutions e.g. from Women’s Institutes to colleges, you will also connect with new audiences who will bring new ideas, people and skills to your club.
Svend then introduced the concept of the Community Sports Enterprise where, as the slide shows, there are eight key strands to develop a well-run, sustainable enterprise facility. Those eight strands are interdependent so every facility enterprise must constantly be working on maximising the experiences they provide, the way they generate income and so on.
The webinar then introduced the concept of the balanced income model where facility enterprises develop various funding and income streams from donors, funders, partners and customers ensuring they are less reliant on one single one.
Svend then discussed change and leadership and highlighted how often change programmes fail because there are too many people who are afraid of change and their own role in that strange new world. He highlighted this little story he heard on his local radio station.
Svend then discussed change and leadership and highlighted how often change programmes fail because there are too many people who are afraid of change and their own role in that strange new world.
He highlighted this little story he heard on his local radio station.
He then suggested that every facility should consider subletting space to community services such as health centres, beauty salons, vets or as in the case of Westquarter & Redding Cricket Club who are renting out one of the buildings on their ground to a children’s nursery, so apart from the very welcome rental income they also get loads on local young families using their car park and becoming familiar with the club.
He then highlighted the importance of providing
a great customer experience, ie in the case of how you serve your coffee:
Then followed some great case studies where community sports clubs and enterprises had delivered some amazing transformations of existing places, from tennis clubs, climbing centres and skate parks – as Svend says
“it can be done”, just get on with it and use the three 3s.
To listen to the whole recording of the webinar click here and if you want to have a chat with Svend on how he can help with sweating your asset and run a viable, enterprising facility contact him 01423 326 660 or email svend@smnuk.com.
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Despite continued efforts, and various initiatives, community sport and physical activity in most places has not managed to significantly increase participation among people with different attributes and backgrounds (i.e. race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion) in a meaningful way.
Diversity is the mix of peoples’ different attributes and backgrounds and a good way is to think about diversity is to think about your local community. Does your club/centre reflect the diversity of your local community? Diversity is the mix of people, inclusion is trying to get this mix to all work together in harmony.
Representing your members and your community?
Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) is an important sports body in Australia due to the importance of life on the beaches in Australia and the many resultant accidents in the water.
40% of drowning accidents happen to people born outside the country as people from Somalia, Afghanistan and so on often can’t swim and understand the dangers of the sea.
Also, 43% of the 140.000 members of SLSA are females, so all told one can only wonder over the composition of the SLSA board and how they are engaging with 43% of their members and a large sector of the Australian community?
It’s both about people and money
Being a inclusive, diverse and equitable place where people of all backgrounds can feel they belong and are part of something good is fantastic. But another great reason is something more prosaic; Money.
Here are some estimates of the purchasing power of some of our minorities.
The pink pound
Pink money describes the purchasing power of the LBGT+ community. With the rise of the gay rights pink money has gone from being a fringe or marginalised market to a thriving industry in many parts of the Western world such as the USA and UK. Many businesses and places now specifically cater to gay customers, including nightclubs, shops, restaurants, and even taxicabs; the demand for these services stems from common discrimination by traditional businesses and places.
In 2019, LGBT adults globally held a combined buying power of approximately $3.7 trillion and the UK gay market is worth an estimated £6 billion per year.
The Blue pound
The spending power of people with disabilities is really rather sizeable. There are about 11 million disabled people in the UK and it is generally estimated that they spend around 80 billion pounds per year. If businesses design stylish mobility products, they will benefit. If shops and restaurants provide quality access and disabled facilities, they will do the same.
The ethnic pound
1 in 6 individuals living in the UK are from an ethnic minority background and they spend £145 billion in the economy, yet only 1 in 5 companies are reaching out to them as consumers
How diverse and inclusive and representative of your members
and your community is your board?
So, how to start your journey towards becoming a more diverse and inclusive place
First, this is not about policies – it’s about developing a welcoming culture and experiences for everyone.
We can all download some wonderful policies and then claim that we are diverse and inclusive. But it is about how everyone within your club, group, facility sports body behave and welcome people from the whole community.
Now imagine you are this young girl.
Yesterday, she watched a short video about your sport and thought she would like to give it a go. After some toing and froing, she did find your website
(does your club have a vibrant social media presence where this girl can see whether she knows somebody there?)
It was a bit difficult to find out exactly when she could come to the club as a newcomer, what she should wear, whether she needed to bring her own equipment…all those questions that most of would struggle to answer before going somewhere for the first time.
She managed to get to where your club trains and there she is standing no doubt feeling apprehensive. Three members have just walked past her, chatting away, all dressed in the ‘right gear’. Honestly, I don’t think anybody would be very surprised if she decided to go back home, never to be seen again at your club.
I am sure this wouldn’t happen at your club. I am sure there would be somebody who would make sure that this girl would be made to feel really welcome, introduced to people, join a ‘Get Into Session etc.
Now imagine you are this young girl.
Yesterday, she watched a short video about your sport and thought she would like to give it a go. After some toing and froing, she did find your website
(does your club have a vibrant social media presence where this girl can see whether she knows somebody there?)
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Also, we continue to see those groups lag behind their white counterparts in terms of being physically active and living long and healthy lives.
The sporting landscape has changed enormously in recent years. Government and community expectations for good governance, integrity, equality, member protection and child safeguarding means that providing safe, fair and inclusive sporting environments is no longer an aspiration, but an imperative.
How Northumberland Cricket Board (NCB) developed a diverse and inclusive Board
The NCB was formed in 2010 and initially, it comprised white men with either a cricket and/or local authority background. Russell Perry, the Chair then decided that to become a more relevant and representative group they had to bring in people with a different background and skillset.
The process was led by Claris D’cruz, a local charity barrister/consultant and an NCB Director.
Gradually, they broadened the scope of the members of the Board, challenged groupthink and brought in new contacts and skills, which helped them to engage better with their community, funders and the ECB.
The board now has twelve members, three women, three of Asian descent, four in their forties and two in their thirties.
The demographic of the communities in which sport operates has also changed dramatically. Our culturally, linguistically and gender diverse communities are looking for sporting options and experiences that celebrate diversity, promote inclusion, and most importantly, make people feel like they belong.
We must develop pro-active behaviours, options and actions to make people from all backgrounds, ages and abilities feel welcome, respected and that they belong at your club/centre. Being inclusive is about following best practices for what sport/physical activity should be so that everyone can get the most out of it.
Diversity is the mix of peoples’ different attributes and backgrounds and a good way is to think about diversity is to think about your local community. Does your club/centre reflect the diversity of your local community? Diversity is the mix of people, inclusion is trying to get this mix to all work together in harmony.
Every Saturday the gym also hosts ‘Counterpunch’, a group aimed specifically at encouraging males to talk about their mental health.
Counterpunch helps the club reach out to vulnerable people, empower them and make
positive changes to their lives by offering informal mental health support from its coaches – many of whom have experienced mental health problems themselves
Everyone should have the opportunity to be actively involved in whatever sport they choose, in whatever capacity they choose. Each sporting organisation should be committed to being inclusive and open to all members of the UK community regardless of age, gender, disability, cultural or religious background or sexual orientation, or other attributes that may add to any person feeling excluded or isolated.
But the reality is, a tale of missed opportunities still exists. Sports and clubs are missing out on entire groups of potential members, players, administrators and volunteers. More importantly, people who want to play sports feel, for a variety of reasons and barriers, excluded and don’t want to become involved.
Welcome to our club?
Golf club secretary: “Of course, we welcome new members,
as long as their handicap is low enough”
Those challenges and opportunities exist within culturally and linguistically diverse populations. gender inclusion, homophobia and sexuality, people with a disability, race-based inclusion and religious vilification.
The Welcoming Sport programme aims to improve on that situation
“Asian communities are an important part of the football landscape and should
be better represented across the game.
It’s like in any business if you’re only selecting from a smaller section of the population then what are you missing?”
Gareth Southgate
It is therefore key that they, as far as possible, speak the same language and send out the same messages which, unfortunately, is not always the case. The intro meetings should each run for, say, two hours.
We will present the programme and content and listen to feedback and comments and fine-tune the format and content.
We see these intro meetings as an important element in developing the Welcoming Sport movement.
‘Flyerz’ hockey is the name widely associated with grassroots disability, inclusive hockey in Great Britain. There are now more than 20 Flyerz sections across England, Wales and Scotland, providing inclusive hockey for disabled people.
In 2011, Access Sport’s Disability Inclusion Programme was launched to support local community sports clubs to become more inclusive of disabled young people. Access Sport partnered with Waltham Forest Hockey Club to create the first fully inclusive hockey section in England, which was named ‘Forest Flyerz’ and inspired other clubs to introduce ‘Flyerz’ hockey.to Access Sport supports hockey clubs in starting their Flyerz section, providing them with the tools and resources they need in their journey to become inclusive of disabled individuals.
Kate Page, Development Manager for Disability Inclusion at Access Sport says, “don’t hesitate! Don’t overcomplicate. There’s no right time – just do it!”. Adapt only when needed. Try to keep sessions similar to the mainstream sessions – adapt or simplify only when necessary”, wise words we think.
An email account innovation@englandgolf.com was set up and the campaign received 500 email responses.
Half of those said that “there was nothing wrong with golf”, that “this campaign was waste of time and money” and that “BBC should show every minute of the British Open and then the kids would want to play golf”.
Full stop. It is worth noting that 30 per cent of UK households have a dog.
So, if your dog is welcome at some of the UK’s most prestigious golf courses, surely all other courses should follow suit.
Every year in South Shields, outside Newcastle, the world’s largest Dog Walk takes place with 34,000 dogs and their owners, raising £ 1 Mio for doggy charities. Also, 20 National Trust properties run dog walk in aid of Hearing Dogs for the Deaf, so they raise money for a good cause and attract visitors to their properties.
We told those stories at England Golf’s sell-out innovation conference, that SMN organised for them at Villa Park, which brought together 200 people from across golf keen to be inspired to develop new initiatives.
We propose to a similar social media/PR campaign with a strapline such as #MoreWelcomingSport where we invite ideas and examples on how we can make sport more welcoming, diverse and inclusive.
Getting females from multi-ethnic communities to play football
Nagin Ravand is an Afghan refugee whose parents moved to Denmark in 2002, so she was brought up in a very egalitarian ‘Danish-style’ culture.
Relatively quickly she discovered that she was a good footballer and she never considered that it was unusual in Denmark to see girls playing football wearing a hijab.
When she was 12 the family moved to Gellerup an area in Aarhus, which is a multicultural community where many residents come from countries where females do not normally play football.
When she realised that some of the parents were concerned that their daughters were missing out on their school work due to football, she started study classes alongside the football sessions.
Since then Nagin has won several sports and community awards and is now an ambassador for getting females from multicultural backgrounds to play football.
In between, she is also a second-year student at Aarhus University.
For Nagin, young people from deprived areas must get the same opportunities and experiences as other young people.
”It is important that we give Muhammed and Aamirah something to talk with Svend and Maria about. It is about giving the young people something they can have in common” she points out.
Over the years, SMN has developed a toolbox that we tend to use when we develop our courses:
At this stage, we reckon there will be a programme with a blend of face-to-face workshops and online webinars.
We propose to offer a 3-hour intro workshop called Welcoming Sport where we go through how providers of community sport can develop and deliver great, welcoming experiences for everyone regardless of their background and skills.
Mixed Ability Sports (MAS) was conceived to promote social inclusion and meaningful interaction between individuals and groups who wouldn’t necessarily share paths in their local communities. At least not in ‘normal’ circumstances.
Many of their participants have experienced – or still, experience – exclusion, social isolation and segregation daily because of their perceived diversity, and MAS is their only asset.
An asset to their physical, social and mental wellbeing, a space of equality, rights and equal opportunities. A crucial part of their identity.
We are proposing that Welcoming Sport, over time, build a similar database/library covering how to deliver welcoming, inclusive and diverse sport with guides, case studies and webinar videos that we are constantly producing for the Welcoming Sport project.
Initially, SMN will produce a 32-page guide on How to become a Welcoming place for sport, which and we will then produce add-on guides and so and build this all-encompassing library covering all aspects of delivering welcoming, inclusive and diverse sport.
The new categories were:
The impact was considerable, as the whole support and training programme was also geared towards improving the clubs’ performance in these six areas.
The awards were presented at the annual Club Enterprise Conference.
We would like to propose that we include a Welcoming Sport Award programme in this project.
The awards could include:
The awards could be presented at an annual Welcoming Sport conference where we highlight best practices, showcase great examples, bring in ideas and thinking from customer service, hospitality, retail and entertainment and generally, inspire bodies, clubs, enterprises, charities, coaches and others.
Sports Marketing Network – a strong, credible and experienced partner
Since 2006 SMN have helped physical activity and community sports providers to share best practice on how to become vibrant, visible and viable and develop innovative and enterprising enterprises.
We have been described as positive disruptors and we have worked with a wide range of sport, physical activity and community organisations helping them to adapt, change and become better equipped to the changing landscape.
More than 4000 community sports providers from across the have participated in one of our Grow Your Club workshops, benefitted from 1:2:1 consultancy and mentoring, attended one of our conferences, participated in one of our webinars or read one of our Guides, so we have developed an unparalleled knowledge and understanding of the opportunities and challenges for the enterprise and innovation aspects of community sport and physical activity.
Thousands of people involved with community sport and physical activity across the UK and Scandinavia have participated in one of our ‘hot topics’ conferences covering issues such as Innovation and Enterprise in Community Sport, More Disabled People into Sport, Delivering great sport and physical activities for and with ethnically diverse communities, More Girls into Sport, Britain’s Active Parks, Disability Sport or Sport for Disabled People and A Healthier Nation through Sport and Physical Activity.
We have also developed and delivered year-long projects for Cricket Scotland, Rugby Football League, Football Association Wales Trust, Copenhagen City Council, Ulster University, sportscotland, London Sport, Sport Hub Denmark Golf England, Sport Wales and Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity/Burgess Sport so we have considerable experience in developing and delivering, sometimes complex, blended, innovative award-winning projects which make a real difference.