Member Spotlight: England Athletics

What’s your name and position within the organisation?

Tell us a little bit about England Athletics?

England Athletics’ vision as the membership and development body for grassroots athletics and running clubs in England is to make athletics and running the most popular and inclusive sport in the country.

We support our 1,400 affiliated clubs, 181,000 registered athletes and 400 affiliated organisations to prosper. By listening and consulting with our membership to understand what’s needed at a grassroots level to develop athletics and running, we support our member clubs and athletes from start to finish with, for example, coach development opportunities, resource provision for whole club development planning, volunteer training and recognition, welfare support and event registration.

We also work to inspire everyone in England to start running as part of a group or community through RunTogether (a national recreational group-based running opportunity with over 115,000 members across 2,500 groups.

What are some of the challenges you’re facing – and how are you addressing them?

Telling the full grassroots to glory story

Unlike most sports governing bodies and federations, such football (FA) or cricket (ECB) we are not solely responsible for the sport from grassroots to elite. British Athletics takes the lead on delivering the British team at events such the Olympics and Athletics World Championships, as well as the major events in the UK. Whilst at England Athletics, we are responsible for the grassroots club networks, as well as nurturing athletes through the talent pathway.  From a sponsorship perspective this has meant hasn’t been easy to create assets that tell the full grassroots to glory story.

We have been able to overcome this by building discrete relationships with some of our highest profile athletes such as Katarina Johnson-Thompson for our new kids programme funetics and Dina Asher-Smith for our coaching campaign, Go Coach.

Working with DW Fitness First, our biggest commercial partner, we have developed an extensive network of medal winning GB athletes, such as Perri Shakes-Drayton and Emily Diamond, which whilst they don’t have quite the same profile, have a large and highly engaged social media following.  

Building a credible sponsorship package for England teams

Whilst we are responsible for delivering an England team for the Commonwealth Games, we have no rights connected to the event or the team. The other events at which England teams compete are much lower profile, with limited media value. As such, our England teams sponsorship package is based on employee engagement rather than B2C. We have created a package that brings together support for employees across performance, physical and mental wellbeing. This has been achieved using a combination of:

• High profile coaches to help translate elite sporting performance into the workplace  through workshops on coaching, mentoring, stress management and building high performing teams
• Nurturing healthy employees by creating workplace running groups and developing a network of mental health champions     

What are the current trends within your business area, and how are they affecting how you work?

Brands and social purpose

There is increasing expectation amongst consumers that it is no longer sufficient for brands to simply deliver an excellent product at a good price. They also expect them to have a wider social purpose that is both relevant to their business and a commitment to cause that is shared by their customers. Whilst much of the current media coverage is focused on climate change and the environment, the physical and mental health of our children remains a key concern for parents.

Inspiring the next generation to be happy and healthy

With growing levels of inactivity amongst children and worrying trends around mental health in primary schools children, sport should be in a strong position to help.

• Government recommendation for children is 60 minutes activity / day, but currently only 22% of primary school children achieving this. 
• Currently 1 in 8 primary school child has a mental health disorder, with 8 out 10 teachers reporting this has deteriorated in the past two years
• Being active made the majority of 5 to 11 year olds feel happier (79%), more confident (72%), and more sociable (74%).

Our challenge was to produce a compelling offer for primary school children, which achieved cut through with parents, schools, children and brands in a very crowded schools sport market.

We are launching funetics next year with the support of two the sport’s highest profile athletes – Usain Bolt, through a partnership with Enertor Insoles, and Katarina Johnson-Thompson. 

We were also in the fortunate position of having:

• A sport that appeals equally to boys and girls
• A clear demand for more athletics, as demonstrated by waiting lists at clubs and a stated preference from schools
• The basis of athletics – running, jumping and throwing skills are fundamental to many sports, from netball and football to cricket and basketball     

Whilst Usain Bolt and Katarina Johnson-Thompson will be great at generating interest, to drive long-term deep engagement, we have created apps which will enable parents, children and schools to track participants progress against a clearly defined skills framework. This is the first school sports programme to provide genuine long term trackable physical literacy. The parents app also provides video resources for activities they can try at home, which are delivered linked to their child’s progress against the skills framework.

From a sponsorship perspective, this means we are able to offer a partner a winning combination of:

• Extensive reach (projected to engage 250,000 children in the first two years)
• High profile athlete support
• Deep and long term engagement of parents and children
• Ability to co-create and shape content and delivery before launch next year.

Whilst it’s still early days, we are confident that funetics has a bright future.