FY24 Football Foundation x Premier League Stadium Fund Marketing and Communications Round Up

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS FY24 ROUND UP

INTRODUCTION

In FY24, we celebrated our biggest year of funding to date and focused on bringing the Football Foundation work to life through storytelling.

Our key marketing and communications objectives remained the same:

• Grow attribution - increase recognition of Funding Partner investment and the impact it makes, particularly amongst Local Authorities and MPs.

• Unlock Partnerships – ensure Local Authorities, Educational establishments and sites understand the benefits of investing in facilities to unlock partnership funding opportunities and support applicants to overcome planning barriers.

• Support the Grassroots Football community – increase awareness of all funding opportunities available. And when applicants do apply, ensure every engagement with the Foundation is as easy as possible by providing guidance throughout the pre-application, application and post-award process.

• Secure next tranche of additional government funding –increase engagement with MPs and Government to showcase how we delivered our biggest year of funding to date in constituencies across the country and launched From the Roots Up – our public affairs strategy - in preparation for the General Election in July.

FY24 KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

This round up highlights the strong marketing and communications activity this year. Here are the key achievements:

• Ran a Get Your Pitch Match-fit campaign competition for two volunteer groundskeepers to help prepare Wembley pitch ahead of the Lionesses’ game alongside our Supporter Karl Standley, Head Groundskeeper at Wembley.

• PitchPower became an award-winning app. We won at the the Sports Business Award for Sports Technology of the Year and Prolific North Awards for Tech for Good.

• As part of our HERe to Play campaign, we reached new audiences working with Rachel Daly and Chloe Kelly for the opening of the Lioness Pitches named in their honour. And announced The Lionesses Futures Fund with the whole squad at St George's Park.

• Kicked off the year, with our Let’s Go 2024 campaign, highlighting our biggest ever level of support for sports clubs and organisations across the country and promoting all the funding available.

• From The Roots Up campaign launched in January. Key materials such as digital assets, a newspaper hand out and paid social campaign were developed to ensure our work to engage with MPs and local authorities is impactful.

• Hosted two Grassroots Football Drop-in Sessions alongside our Funding Partners at Parliament attended by a total of 110 MPs. Members of the team have hosted an additional 34 key cabinet members and influential local MPs at Foundation-funded sites in their constituencies.

• Our first ever PlayZone opened in March at Normanton Park, Derby. We launched our PlayZone campaign film, explaining what a PlayZone is and highlighting how the community plays a key part in shaping the site and the sport played.

• Our media coverage has been overwhelmingly positive and hit over 360 million in terms of reach, providing attribution to our partners across national, local and regional broadcast, online and print outlets.

• Updated all our Applicant Publicity Portals with new social assets, press releases and letters to MPs, for applicants to use to share the news of their grant on their social channels, media and with local government.

• More Instagram Collabs with our Funding Partners’ than ever before has helped us boost our reach and increased engagement on our content.

1.HOW WE’VE DEMONSTRATED IMPACT

To showcase the incredible impact of our Funding Partners’ investment, we created bespoke graphics for every constituency, local authority and county in England. The graphics were shared at the start of the season and end of 2023 with over 2.3k contacts. We encouraged MPs, councillors and metro mayors to post on social media, to help increase our reach and continue building relationships with them and their communities.

We rounded off 2023 with seasonal graphics and a Year in Review video which brings to life the impact of our Funding Partners’ investment. These pieces of content were seen by over 86k across our social media channels.

WORKING WITH COUNTY FAS

Throughout the year, we have worked closely with our partners at local County FAs. Here are some examples:

• Presented our campaigns at several Facilities Update Webinars.

• Created a new Football Foundation Marketing Teams group on the County FA Facilities Team Channel so we can share our campaigns and assets.

• Created a County FA brand portal which gave them access to our logo, brand and campaign assets.

• Produced bespoke impact graphics to demonstrate the investment into each County FA since 2000. County FAs then shared these assets on their various social media and digital channels.

• Engaged with County FA social posts.

• Worked closely with County FAs to identify a range of impact stories with their area.

IMPACT STORIES

Over the last 12 months, we’ve told the story of over 20 clubs, which demonstrate the positive outcomes from partner investment and inspire a broad range of applications.

Worcestershire County FA

Newcastle Community Hub

Brookvale Recreation Centre

Crawley Green

Frenford FC

Our PitchPower web-app was nominated for four awards and won two (winning awards highlighted in bold):

• Sports Business Awards 2023: Sports Technology of the Year

• Sports Business Awards 2023: Sports Innovation Award

• Prolific North: Tech for Good

• The Drum Awards Marketing EMEA: Technology Innovation

Our Active Through Football Programme was shortlisted at the Sports Industry Awards for the Tessa Jowell Social Impact Award. The award is open to organisations using sport as a vehicle to drive community change, diversity and inclusion, or broader social impact through sport.

2. CAMPAIGNS

HERE TO PLAY

Our HERe to Play campaign launched in February 2023 and continues to celebrate our biggest ever commitment to delivering facilities that provide equal access to women and girls playing football.

HERe to Play aims to:

• Demonstrate our Funding Partners’ investment and commitment into making facilities equally accessible to women and girls​.

• Inspire women and girls to get playing.

• Encourage clubs and sites to create welcoming facilities for women and girls.

What we’ve been doing this season:

• Celebrated the achievement of the World Cup squad and told Katie Robinson’s Foundation story.

• Collaborated with Rachel Daly and Chloe Kelly on their pitch openings.

• Launched The Lionesses Futures Fund at St George’s Park.

• Shared best in class examples of sites making a difference to women and girls’ football.

WOMEN’S WORLD CUP

The FIFA World Cup tournament in Australia and New Zealand kicked off in July. It provided a great opportunity for us to continue the momentum of our HERe to Play campaign, showcasing the importance of grassroots football facilities and how our funding is supporting the facilities for the next generation.

What we did:

• Continued the ‘Foundations’ content series with Lioness Katie Robinson, which celebrated the role of grassroots football and community facilities in her journey.

• Shared best in class examples of sites making a difference to women and girls’ football.

• Utilised content already captured with Emma Hayes, Ian Wright, Jill Scott and Ella Toone.

• Our MP newsletter focused on HERe to Play campaign and post the World Cup, emails were sent to MPs with new players in their constituency

• CEO blog about the importance of equal access for women and girls.

Our World Cup content tied into our HERe to Play campaign, reminding people of our commitment to women and girls. In the run up to the tournament, we reposted our HERe to Play campaign film, featuring Jill Scott and shared content from the Ella Toone pitch unveiling.

As the Lionesses progressed throughout the tournament, we continued to highlight the impact of providing equal access to women and girls at facilities, with impact stories from sites and Lioness Katie Robinson’s grassroots story.

Our content plans were shared with our Funding Partners and County FA’s for them to use and engage with. Our content achieved:

99k +48%

RACHEL DALY PITCH UNVEILING

4

Pieces of media coverage

15k*

Total reach

*excludes ITV News piece of event, as no mention of Football Foundation

The content followed a similar format to the other Lioness pitch unveilings. We announced the unveiling with photos from the day, followed by an event film, Rachel’s grassroots story and her 11 questions. On Instagram, we did Collab posts with Rachel, Lionesses and England Football.

1.7m 40k +57%

Reach on Facebook & Instagram

Likes on Instagram content

(Collabs with Lionesses and Rachel Daly)

Website traffic from social media in the week post launch

LIONESSES FUTURES FUND LAUNCH

What is the fund?

• A £30 million cash injection from the Premier League, The FA and Government’s Football Foundation.

• The Fund will support the development of approximately 30 new 3G pitches and facilities across England, designed to prioritise women's and girls’ football teams.

• Successful sites have demonstrated that their site is set to deliver a best-in-class experience for women and girls.

How we launched the fund:

• Launched in November 2023, pupils from a local school joined the Lionesses at St George’s Park alongside the Culture Secretary, Lucy Frazer and Kay Cossington from The FA.

• We created a launch film with Lionesses Mary Earps and Lucy Bronze highlighting the difference the fund will make to women and girls across the country.

• Worked with DCMS on a press release and collaborated on Instagram posts with the Lionesses and The FA accounts.

8

Pieces of broadcast/online/print coverage

20m

Total reach

LIONESSES FUTURES FUND DIGITAL RESULTS

Our campaign film introducing the fund with the Lionesses was posted as an Instagram Collab with the Lionesses and England Football accounts. This allowed us to increase exposure of the fund and boost the reach of our content. The likes we received on our campaign film was significantly higher than our other posts because of the Collab.

Since the launch of the fund, we’ve achieved:

126k 11k 189k +19% Reach on

&

Likes on Instagram content (Collabs with Lionesses and England Football)

on

LinkedIn & X (including Collabs with Lionesses and England Football) Website traffic from social media in the week post launch

GET YOUR PITCH MATCH FIT

Our grass pitch campaign runs throughout the year with the key time for PitchPower inspections from November to March.

The aim is to drive behaviour change in the grassroots football community through the sharing of funding success, knowledge of pitch maintenance and celebration of pitch quality.

What we’ve been doing this season:

• Captured content of sites who have used PitchPower and have benefitted from Grass Pitch Maintenance Funding.

• Targeted emails to grass pitch sites to encourage them to use PitchPower and apply for funding.

• Successful paid social campaign.

• Sent press releases to regional media with local case studies.

• Ran a competition for two volunteer groundskeepers to help prepare the world-famous Wembley pitch ahead of the Lionesses’ game against the Netherlands (watch the film on the next slide)

As experts in grass pitch maintenance, we want to share our knowledge with the football community to help get their pitches match fit.

What we’ve been doing this season to educate clubs:

• Created a suite of assets for Instagram stories, Twitter and Facebook with our top grass tips.

• Created guidance on our website on what clubs need to do to maintain their grass pitches.

• Proactively created plans for drought, waterlogged pitches.

• Asked clubs for their grass tips and reshared with our channels.

GET YOUR PITCH MATCH FIT MEDIA REACH

9

Pieces of broadcast/online/ print coverage

1.5m

Total reach

Our content focused on encouraging people to register their pitch on PitchPower and receive funding. We shared a range of content from impact stories to grass pitch tips and films demonstrating the benefits of PitchPower. The Wembley Groundskeeping competition provided us with lots of content, which we could continue to put out long after the competition and was supported by Wembley Stadium and England Football with an Instagram Collab.

We sent targeted emails about the campaign to current PitchPower users, Local Authorities, education sites with grass pitches, Foundation funded grass pitch sites.

515k 397k 46.5k 10.7k +28%

Reach on Facebook and Instagram Impressions on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & X Webpage visits Emails sent PitchPower submissions compared to campaign period year on year

We also ran a paid social campaign using the campaign films, targeting people with an interest in football and directing people to do their pitch inspection. Reach

The Groundskeeping Community is a platform, we provide for groundskeepers to come together for peer-topeer support and free expert advice from us and the Grounds Management Association.

• This season, the community has grown by 12%, becoming a space to learn and communicate for 3,824 members.

• The monthly average number of users accessing the online community was 328, with January being the busiest month seeing 394 people active on the platform.

• Users viewed the available resources over 88,000 times. The ‘Get Your Pitch Match Fit’ and ‘Dealing with pitch use in wet and waterlogged conditions’ were the most viewed resources.

• Users are creating and contributing to discussions, with over 560 posts and comments shared across the community. The most common themes are questions about pitch maintenance and equipment, sharing experiences of weather and seasonal implications, and sharing their successes and progress.

LET’S GO 2024!

Following a record-breaking year in 2023, delivering £76 million to improve grassroots facilities across England, we kicked off 2024 highlighting our biggest ever level of support for sports clubs and organisations across the country and how easy it is to apply for funding.

What we did:

• Created three Let’s Go films showcasing all the grants available as well as highlighting our campaigns.

• Shared a suite of grant specific assets to use on our digital channels across paid and organic. The assets were shared with Funding Partners and County FAs to use too.

• News story on the website to direct social posts – this included details of all support to clubs and organisations.

• Highlighted stories of clubs which had received grants for storage containers, portable floodlights and goalposts

• Wrote to every MP in England with a link to their LFFP and our funding page, encouraging them to share on their social channels

We kicked off 2023 with three new animations, highlighting all the amazing support we’re providing grassroots sport this year. The campaign aimed to raise awareness of all the funding opportunities available thanks to our Funding Partners and inspire clubs to apply. We also shared stories from sites who have received funding and utilised the grant specific social graphics from 2023.

We sent emails to all Foundation grantees (past and present) and Local Authorities which outlined our line-up of support. Our Public Affairs January newsletter also focused on the campaign and went to all MPs encouraging them to share messaging about our grants.

We also ran a paid social campaign using the campaign animations, targeting our priority areas and directing people to our Looking for Funding webpage.

Reach on Facebook and Instagram

Impressions on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & X

New visitors to the Looking for Funding webpage post launch compared with previous month Emails sent

3. MILESTONE EVENTS

CHICHESTER CITY FC PITCH OPENING

In January, we opened a new 3G stadia pitch at Oaklands Park in Chichester. This site included funding from Football Foundation and Premier League Stadium Fund via the Club Development Fund.

What we did

• Worked in partnership with Chichester City FC to host an opening event with key stakeholders, media and the local community.

• Sports Minister Stuart Andrew announced the next set of grassroots facilities that received DCMS funding at the event, with local MP and Minister of State for Education Gillian Keegan also in attendance.

• Achieved coverage of the opening across a spread of national, regional, trade print and broadcast media with clear signposting to our Funding Partners.

• Collaborated with our Funding Partners on content so the campaign reached their audiences too.

THE BOBBY MOORE SPORTS HUB OPENING

In February, we opened The Bobby Moore Sports Hub, featuring pitches named after Sir Trevor Brooking, Paul Ince and Chloe Kelly, in Dagenham, London.

The Hub features 16 grass sports pitches, three 3G pitches and a gym. It will be used by the whole community, West Ham United Foundation and the new National League System stadia pitch will be used by local club May & Baker FC.

Local heroes and footballing legends Bobby Zamora, Anton Ferdinand and Hawa Sissoko attended the opening driving media and social coverage.

What we did

• Worked in partnership with Barking and Dagenham Council, Greater London Authority and the London Marathon Foundation who also funded the pitch to host an opening event with past and present West Ham United players, key stakeholders, media and the local community.

• Hosted Deputy London Mayor and Leader of the Council at the opening

• Unveiled the fourth Here to Play Lioness pitch – The Chloe Kelly Pitch.

• Achieved coverage of the opening across a spread of national, regional, trade print and broadcast media.

• Collaborated with our Funding Partners on content so the campaign reached their audiences too.

Total media reach

THE BOBBY MOORE SPORTS HUB MEDIA COVERAGE

“Legendary West Ham United and World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore has had a state-of-the-art sports hub named after him in East London, thanks to a big money grant from the Premier League, The FA and Government’s Football Foundation.”

Asad Ahmed, BBC London

“The fact that Bobby Moore’s legacy is going to continue and inspire the next generation here is fantastic.”

Anton Ferdinand, BBC London

“I’d like to give massive thanks to the Premier League, The FA and Government’s Football Foundation for honouring the England’s squad’s achievements.”

Chloe Kelly, FC Business

We created different content to bring to life the facility and ensure a drumbeat of activity across our own and our Funding Partners' channels. Posts from our Funding Partners and an Instagram Collab with the Premier League helped to increase our reach massively, spreading our message to new audiences. On digital, we’ve achieved:

1.08m 450k +21%

Reach including partner and media channels

Impressions on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & X New website visitors post opening compared to the previous week

PUBLIC AFFAIRS ENGAGEMENT AT THE BOBBY MOORE SPORTS HUB

• We were joined at the opening by Dr Debbie Weekes-Bernard (Deputy Mayor of London for Communities and Social Justice) and Councillor Darren Rodwell (Leader of Barking and Dagenham Council)

• Local MP (Dame Margaret Hodge) was unable to attend

• Post event letters were sent to Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London) and Dr Debbie Weekes-Bernard sharing photos and an invitation to visit a Foundation site

“Bobby Moore is one of London’s greatest sportsmen, so it is truly fitting to see him remembered in a space where generations of young talent will come to hone their skills and communities can come together.”

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

FIRST PLAYZONE OPENING

In March, we opened the first ever PlayZone in Normanton Park, Derby. The first of hundreds of PlayZones across the country, these small-sided facilities offer the sports and activities local people really want and enjoy.

The Normanton Park pitch will host football, cricket, netball, touch rugby, quick-stick hockey and dodgeball. A local primary school will also use the PlayZone for 10 hours a week as currently the school has no on-site PE facilities for its 600 students.

What we did

• Launched our PlayZone campaign film, explaining what a PlayZone is and highlighting how the community plays a key part in shaping the site and the sport played.

• Worked in partnership with Sported Communities who will be the site delivery provider to organise the opening.

• Achieved coverage of the opening across a spread of national, regional, trade print and broadcast media.

• Collaborated with our Funding Partners on content so the campaign reached their audiences too.

9

Pieces of broadcast/online/print coverage

1.5m

Total reach

To announce the opening of our first PlayZone, we launched with a campaign film, bringing to life the different ways you can get active at a PlayZone and the importance of community engagement.

The film can be used by future PlayZone sites as part of their community engagement to get people excited for what is to come.

We also created an opening event film showcasing the new site in Normanton Park and took hundreds of photos for us to share on our social channels, along with the site provider, our Funding Partners and County FAs.

As we continue to rollout the PlayZone programme, we’ll continue to build on our bank of content, capturing different PlayZone surfaces and more multi-sport action.

4. MEDIA COVERAGE

Media reach

(-5% on last year)

This slight reduction in coverage is due to five weeks of purdah and a tech issue with our press monitoring service which lasted four weeks

Media articles (-10% on last year)

The gap between the percentage decrease in number of articles is likely to be related. Reach continues to focus on quality over quantity

Pieces of broadcast coverage (-32% on last year)

Broadcast coverage is boosted by media on site at openings –several have had to be rescheduled for FY25 due to purdah and Lioness availability

Positive sentiment (+2% on last year)

Our coverage has been overwhelmingly positive, which is particularly encouraging given the emerging coverage of environmental concerns related to 3G pitches, which has so far very rarely criticised the Football Foundation directly

SNAPSHOT OF REGIONAL MEDIA

SNAPSHOT

OF SPORT, TRADE AND THIRD SECTOR MEDIA

5. DIGITAL RESULTS

Our social media channels have continued to grow, with increased engagement from clubs, MPs, volunteers, local authorities, our Supporters and beyond.

This season, we’ve used Instagram Collab posts with our Funding Partners’ more than ever before, which has helped get our messages to new audiences. This is something we plan to continue working on with Funding Partners next season.

1.4m 1m+ 615k 6.8k+ 12

Reach on Facebook & Instagram (162% increase on last season)

Impressions on X

Impressions on LinkedIn New Fans and Followers across all accounts Collabs with other accounts

Reach is the number of unique users seeing this content. Impressions is the total number of times this content was seen.

We’ve continued to develop the website, creating content to support our search engine rankings, from offering more guidance to clubs, to showcasing impact stories about our funding. This has resulted in more users finding us directly through search engines (e.g. Google).

Our Funding webpage, which lists all our grants, is our most popular page and we’ve seen more traffic to the Application Portal, which reflects our biggest year of funding to date.

The results below are compared with last season.

Total site visitors

Visitors accessing site through organic search Clicks to the Application Portal

KEEPING UP WITH THE NEWS AGENDA ON

Lionesses

DCMS

Sport England

England Football

Premier League

6. UNLOCKING PARTNERSHIPS

533

MPs emailed

9 34

255

Personalised letters to MPs Meetings with MPs

Personalised letters to Councillors

333 Local Authorities emailed

FROM THE ROOTS UP CAMPAIGN

PUBLIC AFFAIRS ENGAGEMENT

• Launched From the Roots Up public affairs engagement campaign with bespoke messaging, digital assets and paid digital campaign, and printed materials. The campaign demonstrates the impact of the Foundation's funding across six key policy areas - health, the economy, environment, crime, education and tackling inequalities.

• Hosted two Grassroots Football Drop-in Sessions in Parliament at which over 110 MPs or their staff met with the Football Foundation Delivery Team to hear about investment in their constituency

• Quarterly newsletter to key MPs and those MPs we have built a relationship with

• Shared LFFPs, a link to our funding page and personalised graphics showing the Football Foundation investment in their area with every MP, councillor and metro mayor in England and asked them to share this on their social channels

• Opening of Chichester City FC 3G pitch with Sports Minister Stuart Andrew and Education Secretary Gillian Keegan

• Meeting with key members of the Shadow Cabinet, including Deputy Labour Leader Angela Rayner MP at a grassroots club in her constituency and Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire in her Parliamentary office

• Launched Lionesses Futures Fund at St George's Park with Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer

• Met with Deputy Mayor of London at The Bobby Moore Sports Hub and followed up with letter to Mayor of London

Stuart Andrew and Gillian Keegan at Chichester City FC

Stephanie Peacock at Wombwell Recreation Ground

Angela Raynor at Curzon Ashton FC visit

Lucy Frazer at St George’s Park

GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL DROP-IN SESSIONS

GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL DROP -IN SESSION

• Hosted two Grassroots Football Drop-in Sessions in Parliament - one in June 2023 and the other in May 2024.

• Across the two events 110 MPs and their staff sat down with their Football Foundation Delivery Manager to learn about our investment in and future plans for their constituency

• Ahead of the upcoming General Election, 50 MPs, including the Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire and Shadow Sports Minister Stephanie Peacock, signed a pledge committing to grassroots football.

• We followed up after both events with bespoke letters to every MP who attended or signed up with a link to their LFFP and an invite to visit a Foundation-funded site in their constituency.

Stuart Andrew at 2023 Drop-in Session

Stephanie Peacock at 2024 Drop-in Session

Thangam Debbonaire at 2024 Drop-in Session

MP ENGAGEMENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

7. SUPPORTERS

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• Karl Standley supported our Get Your Pitch Match Fit campaign with a bespoke experience for volunteer groundskeepers at Wembley Stadium.

• John Ledwidge, Head of Grounds at Manchester City FC supported our Get Your Pitch Match Fit and Volunteer campaigns.

• We’ve developed relationships with a number of Lionesses as part of the Lioness Pitches HERe to Play campaign including Rachel Daly and Chloe Kelly.

• Ian Wright continued to support the Rocky & Wrighty Arena, by resharing our opening event content to mark the release of EA Sports FC24 and the inclusion of the Rocky & Wrighty Arena in the new game.

• We’ve also been supported by other footballing talent with the likes of Bobby Zamera and Emma Hayes attending opening events and Emile Heskey and John Barnes attending our Grassroots drop in sessions.

LOOKING TO FY25

We’re looking to build on the successes of FY24 and continue driving attribution to Funding Partners, unlocking partnerships, supporting the grassroots football community and securing the next tranche of additional government funding.

We’ll be kicking off the new season with the announcement of our first set of Lionesses Futures Fund sites and unveiling more Lionesses pitches.

Notably, with the General Election a few weeks away, we’ll be ramping up our Public Affairs activity even more to increase engagement with new MPs and the elected Government as we demonstrate the impact of Partner investment on local communities.

We’ll continue to support with the PlayZone roll out across the country, raising awareness of all the new sites, including the PlayZone x EA Sports.

FY25 will also see us talk about our plan to deliver more sustainable sports facilities through our research at the Sheffield test hub, providing clubs with 3G maintenance guidance and launching our new Catering Cabins, helping to support clubs become more self-sufficient.

We’ll continue to increase our social media and digital reach by looking at the best formats that work on our channels. And with the Post Award project being a priority across the organisation, we’ll be building on our support and guidance across our digital channels, by sharing our expertise and top tips with applicants.

We look forward to continuing to work with Funding Partner Public Affairs, Marketing and Communications teams to increase the awareness and understanding of their investment into the Foundation and the impact of its work.

INTRODUCTION

In FY24, our key marketing and communications objectives were:

• Increase attribution to Premier League – grow recognition of Premier League investment and the impact it makes, particularly amongst leagues and clubs.

• Support the delivery of projects and programmes –supporting with the creation of StadiumPower and launch of different funds.

• Continue to collaborate with the Premier League Public Affairs, Marketing and Communications teams - ensure we’re capturing relevant content to be used across different channels and ensuring clubs and teams are aware of all funding opportunities available to them.

FY24 KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

In FY24, we worked collaboratively with the Premier League to increase awareness of the Premier League Stadium through more storytelling and comms. Here are some of the highlights:

o Worked with the Premier League Communications team, to create engaging content to showcase the investment made by the Premier League on their channels and Football Foundation channels

o Launched Stadium Accreditation Programme using StadiumPower

o Opened Premier League LED Floodlight Fund

o Our SEO campaign has driven more traffic than ever before to the website

o Continued to roll out Premier League Signage to sites that have received funding since FY19 to increase attribution for the Premier League at sites across the country

LAUNCHED THE STADIUM ACCREDITATION PROGRAMME USING OUR NEW DIGITAL TOOL, STADIUMPOWER

o Clubs across the National League System and Women's Football Pyramid must meet The FA's Ground Grading requirements, and play at a stadium appropriate to the level of the game they play at

o The monitoring and assessment of this area of work was carried out in different ways, which led to an inconsistent and disjointed method of collecting the required data

o We signed a five year agreement with The FA to begin collecting this data from August 2023, and built a new digital tool, StadiumPower to help collate it

o Since August, 908 clubs from Step 3 to 6 of the National League Stadium have had their stadiums assessed and reported on

o The remaining 72 clubs (National League) will enter the programme from June 2024

o All Women's Football Pyramid clubs from Tier 3 and 4 (72 clubs) have also been assessed, and a further 96 clubs will be brought on to the platform at Tier 5 through 2024/25

o We’re working with colleagues at the Premier League to also assess all venues used as part of the Premier League 2 competition, where those venues are not already on the platform (such as training grounds)

o The data collected will help inform our strategy going forward, and help ensure that the investment is put where it is needed the most

PREMIER LEAGUE LED FLOODLIGHT FUND

o In FY24, we opened the LED Floodlight Fund.

o The fund was promoted on our website and emailed to the 980 clubs across the National League System

o To date 91 applications have been made to the fund

o 56 awards have been made, worth £1.67m (average grant of £30k)

o It is anticipated at least 400 more applications will need to be received to convert all of the stadiums in the NLS to LED over the next five years

SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT

We’ve worked closely with the Premier League team to create a range of content and provide stats, bringing to life the impact of the Premier League Stadium Fund and supporting the Premier League More than a game campaign.

WEBSITE ENGAGEMENT

We launched the website in August 2022 and have continued to develop it throughout this season, with more impact stories, funding information and news stories.

Since last season, we’ve increased site visitors by 100%, which highlights that the content we’ve been creating and our SEO campaign is driving people to the website.

16K 39K 25.6K

Total visitors Website views Website sessions

Media reach

SIGNAGE

We continued to provide sites who received Premier League Stadium with signage. The designs were updated to reflect the More than a game campaign.

LOOKING AHEAD TO FY25

We’re excited to build on the successes of FY24 and working closer with the Premier League team to deliver an enhanced Premier League Stadium Fund brand and Marcomms strategy next season.

• Notably, in FY25 we’ll see the launch of PitchPower National League System to support clubs improve their pitch quality

• We’ll expand the Stadium Accreditation Programme to the Women’s Game Tier 5

• Provide Marcomms support on the new strategy for Premier League Stadium Fund ahead of the new funding deal for FY26 – FY28.

• We’ll also continue to work with the Premier League team on creating more engaging content for both our social media channels and the Premier League social media channels.

• We look forward to continuing to work with the Premier League Public Affairs, Marketing and Communications team to increase the awareness and understanding of the Premier League Stadium Fund and their investment.