Industry Shorts: Southampton, Itf, Infront
Premier League side Southampton, along with its charitable arm, the Saints Foundation, has launched its new Saints As One campaign in an effort to support its local communities during the coronavirus pandemic.
The outreach and engagement project aims to help fans and members of society who find themselves isolated and vulnerable, and will also educate, entertain and unite the club’s wider fanbase.
Southampton will partner with FareShare, a network of charitable food re-distributors, in order to produce 12,000 meals for vulnerable people over the next 12 weeks. The club will fund the ingredients and packaging, as well as providing a team of chefs who have volunteered to work out of the St Mary’s kitchen. It will also provide online educational material for children as well as exercise videos for the wider community. The St Mary’s club has also pledged a minimum of 1,000 free match tickets for NHS staff and their families once football resumes.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) is making resources from its ITF Academy available for free during the shutdown imposed by governments tackling the coronavirus pandemic.
In order to assist 164,000 tennis coaches around the world, the ITF Academy platform will make available a wealth of resources that will not only benefit coaches, but also parents, teachers and anyone who wants to improve their own tennis game.
More than 340 theory-led content pieces, including videos, articles and scientific research papers, will be available for free on the ITF’s educational platform, with interactive courses covering a variety of subjects, from an ‘Introduction to Strategy & Tactics’ to ‘Ethics in Coaching’. New courses will be added each week, with ‘Goal setting’, ‘Tennis Parents’ and ‘Teaching Methodology’ among the upcoming topics to be covered.
Infront has appointed former Director of Esports, Lagardere Sports, Andre Flackel to head up its gaming and esports department.
Flackel, who co-founded Lagardere’s esports department, will report to Christian Muller, SVP People, Innovation & Corporate Services, Infront.
