Steve Birch, Chief Commercial Officer at Sky Betting and Gaming
This time last year, I wrote in these pages about one of the longest and most successful agreements in UK professional sport to date; the partnership between Sky Bet and the English Football League (EFL)
At the time, Sky Bet, part of Flutter Entertainment – the world’s leading online sports betting and iGaming company – had just signed a new five-year extension with the EFL to continue a partnership that began in 2013 through to the end of the 2028/29 campaign.
This deal included a new, higher rights fee from Sky Bet and provided much-needed revenue for EFL clubs, supporting the League’s main objective to make all 72 clubs financially sustainable. Indeed, the fee – some 50% higher than our first agreement – provides critical funding for many clubs that form the cornerstone of their community.
But our commitment at Sky Bet – and across Flutter Entertainment – to doing the right thing goes further than that. And it’s why we decided to go a step further over the past year with two new initiatives – a Building Foundations Fund with the EFL and a £3m partnership with the British Heart Foundation.
The Building Foundations Fund
At Sky Bet, we’re incredibly proud of our partnership with the EFL and the support it gives to the game, but as part of the title extension agreed last year, we both decided to create a new Building Foundations Fund to pump £6m of vital funding into community projects across England and Wales.
This represents the largest, multi-year sponsor-backed fund dedicated solely to community activity, giving community organisations linked to the 72 EFL clubs a chance to bid for grants to invest in ongoing initiatives or to develop new ones.
Just this week, Accrington Stanley, the League Two club with a rich history, became the first to bag a maximum £100k grant for a new 3G pitch at their sports hub, one they hope will drive participation in football across their local community.
Whether the grants are used to improve facilities, increase access to the sports we cherish, or promote the physical and social benefits of sports more broadly, it has been immensely gratifying to see how powerful these partnerships can be.
There are also great examples of how this funding is being used in Yorkshire. Leeds United’s community organisation has used a £10k grant to help tackle isolation among the over 50’s and the Fund was launched in Barnsley, where the club is funding its successful Walking Football programme.
Saving lives with the British Heart Foundation
More recently, at the Sky Bet Playoffs in May, we unveiled a new year-long partnership with the British Heart Foundation to create an army of lifesavers by encouraging 270k people to learn CPR.
We also committed to raising £3m for the charity over the course of the year – money that we hope will improve access to defibrillators in communities across the country and fund groundbreaking research into new treatments for heart conditions.
The campaign got off to a flying start as we signed up a great team of ambassadors, from football stars such as Graeme Souness, Glenn Hoddle and Luton’s Tom Lockyer to real life heroes who have saved a life through their knowledge of CPR.
We want more than a quarter of a million people to spend just 15 minutes learning CPR on the British Heart Foundation’s Revivr training programme. So far more than 50k people have gone onto Revivr – meaning we’re on our way to achieving the target we set.
And it’s so important we raise the profile of CPR. In the UK alone, there are over 30k cardiac arrests outside of hospitals each year, equating to at least five every 90 minutes. Each minute that goes by without CPR reduces the chance of survival by up to 10%. Sadly, less than 1 in 10 survive due to those around them lacking the skills or confidence to administer CPR.
It’s incredible that in just 15 minutes, we can learn such a valuable and lifesaving skill. As former Liverpool legend Graeme Souness who was diagnosed with coronary heart disease in his early 30s, told us: “In the crucial moments following a cardiac arrest, every minute really does matter.”
All of this forms part of our long-term commitment to support Flutter’s global sustainability strategy – the Positive Impact Plan – which has four key pillars: helping our customers Play Well, empowering our colleagues to Work Better, working with our communities to Do More, and reducing our environmental impact with our Go Zero plan.
As anticipation grows ahead of the new season, I am both immensely proud of these efforts so far and excited to see how much further we can go. There remain over 20 million adults in this country who never learn CPR. So, whichever Yorkshire club you are supporting this season, hopefully there’s one thing we can all get behind: ensuring we’re all equipped to step in and save lives should the unimaginable happen.
This article was first published in the Yorkshire Post on 9th August 2024.
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