Industry Shorts: Sport England, Bbc, SailGP

Sport England has launched a new £16.5 million fund in a bid to further support the sport and physical activity sector.

The organisation says its Return to Play Fund is part of its overall response to the coronavirus pandemic, which now includes more than £220m of government and National Lottery funding.

The fund will support groups, clubs and organisations that have been impacted by restrictions brought in to avoid the spread of the disease, and will ‘especially’ seek to support groups working with audiences Sport England believes are finding it more difficult to be active at this time, such as BAME communities, people on lower incomes, those disproportionately affected financially by the crisis, disabled people, and those with extra caring responsibilities brought on by the pandemic.

The BBC has secured exclusive rights to broadcast the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

The news comes as Games organisers confirmed its medal programme, which will see Birmingham 2022 become the first major multi-sport event to award more medals to women than men.

It will also be the first major multi-sport event to take place in Birmingham, and will be the 18th consecutive Commonwealth Games broadcast on the BBC.

SailGP has announced the appointment of Fiona Morgan in the newly created role of Director of Purpose and Impact.

Morgan, who is a Judge at the Sport Industry Awards 2021, joins SailGP to drive the league’s purpose agenda, which has been further boosted by the launch of its Race to the Future initiative.

She joins SailGP from Sky’s corporate and social purpose team, The Bigger Picture, where she shaped social impact strategy and led the Sky Ocean Rescue consumer campaign, which reached an awareness of nearly 50 million people across Europe and resulted in behavioral change among its customers towards plastics. 

Hibernian and Scotland defender Ryan Porteous has become the first elite level male player from Scotland to join Common Goal.

Porteous will use the initiative – which will see him donate 1% of his salary – to help drive female empowerment having head about the movement when Caroline Weir, who is also managed by 77 Sports Management, joined earlier this year. 

Porteous says he has seen first-hand the extra obstacles his older sister Emma, who is also a footballer, has had to overcome in order to try and pursue a career in football as a woman. He has chosen to support grassroots projects that use football to empower women and drive gender equality.

Dugout has enhanced its brand sponsorship activation offering with the launch of Dugout Boost.

The new tool uses the audience segments generated by Dugout’s recently-launched FanPro product to amplify media exposure for sponsorship activations throughout the platform.

Dugout says Boost ensures campaigns are contextually targeted to reach bespoke audiences via its network of more than 110 media publishers including the likes of Sports Illustrated and The Independent. 

Football Manager creators Sports Interactive have announced that the 2021 edition of the popular computer game will include some – but not all – of the features of football in the COVID-19 era in its gameplay.

Sports Interactive Studio Director – and Sport Industry Awards 2021 Judge – Miles Jacobson announced the changes in a blog on the company’s website. In it, he laid out some of the measures that the game will include, such as smaller transfer budgets for lower league clubs at the start of the game to reflect economic uncertainty, and using five substitutions instead of three to reflect the reality of some real world competitions. 

However, Jacobson also revealed that in-game fans will be in attendance at matches from the start, while the game makers will also avoid allowing scenarios where players miss games due to coronavirus outbreaks within the squad.

The measures reflect the fact that, according to Jacobson, “[Football Manager] is meant to be an escape from reality, and having a squad ravaged with an illness has the opposite effect.”