Industry Shorts: Birmingham 2022, SailGP, Eurosport, GB Hockey
A new project designed to encourage social integration among young people from 20 schools across Birmingham has been set up ahead of the city’s staging of the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
The Birmingham Connect project will see young people aged 11 to 13 paired with students in other schools across the city to help them connect through sport.
The project is being run by the children’s charity Youth Sport Trust in partnership with the English Commonwealth Games team, Team England. Funding has been provided by Sport England and other local and national organisations.
SailGP said it wants to inspire sailing fans and partners around the world to commit to a low carbon future after it signed up to the Sport for Climate Action Framework of the UN Climate Change.
The framework calls on sporting organisations to acknowledge the contribution of the sports sector to climate change and take responsibility for striving towards climate neutrality.
Global series SailGP, which said that all of its teams have also committed to the framework, has set a target of achieving its zero-carbon roadmap by 2025.
SailGP Chief Executive Sir Russell Coutts said: “Signing this framework highlights our commitment to achieving sustainability targets, which are an extremely vital part of any business today.”
Pan-European sports broadcaster Eurosport registered a 31% year-on-year increase in digital viewership for its coverage of the 2019 French Open tennis tournament.
On Eurosport Player, the company’s over-the-top (OTT) streaming service, and its official app, average user viewing time was also up 45%.
The Discovery-owned media company said that television viewing figures were also up significantly in a number of markets, including France, the UK and the Netherlands.
Dave Schafer, Senior Vice President of Sports Content, Operations and Planning at Discovery, said: “Our multi-screen content strategy is driving video and streaming growth but our short-formats are also translating to TV and entertaining traditional audiences.”
Great Britain Hockey has claimed that playing its final games of the inaugural FIH Pro League season at the Twickenham Stoop is a “hugely positive step forward” for hockey in the country.
The sport’s governing body in Great Britain said that holding the games at the 15,000-capacity arena will build on last year’s hosting of the Vitality Hockey Women’s World Cup, which attracted 125,000 spectators.
A temporary surface, which is the same turf system that will feature at next year’s Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, is currently being installed at the home of Gallagher Premiership rugby club Harlequins ahead of the men’s and women’s fixtures against New Zealand on June 23.
