Facebook team up with Sport England

Interesting to hear more about the partnership between Sport England and Facebook - the first long term partnership between Facebook and a public body in the UK.

The deal is said to be worth up to £20 million and aims to contribute to the delivery of the Olympic legacy from 2012 - more people playing sport.

By using the social networking site’s influence Sport England hopes to bring people together and transform the way sports bodies relate to the public.

There will be a Facebook ‘Sport Hub’, which will enable NGBs to engage with over 20 million people who use Facebook in the UK. This 'hub' will feel like a Facebook fan page, but will also feature innovative new applications enabling sports bodies and teams to organise and market sports events.

Users will also be able to challenge people in their area to compete against them and then share the results across their networks.

Facebook is to provide an in-kind investment of £5 million a year until March 2013, which will cover the development of the ‘Sport Hub’, as well as pound-for-pound matched advertising spend on Facebook for brands and NGBs to use Facebook ads to encourage people to play more sport.

Students and young people who use Facebook will be the first to benefit - starting at this year’s university freshers’ week. Sport England is piloting the scheme through British Universities & Colleges Sport and six sports. The pilot has an ambitious target to get 12,000 students participating in sport in just four months.

Get on Your Bike

This summer's holiday in South West France with the family saw us enjoying the incredible cycle path network. Miles and miles of superb, wide, flat cycle paths, made cycling a real pleasure for all ages and a result we piled on the miles and rather than the pounds as we kept active enough to relax and enjoy the delicious french food on offer.

It was with more interest that usual then that attended a session on 'Active Transport' at the BASES Annual Conference last week. Professor Jim McKenna, Adrian Davies, Dr Ashley Cooper and Andy Smith gave an enlightening summary of why our nation is so poor when it comes to travelling anywhere by bike and what's being done in some areas to combat this.

Dr Cooper gave some frightening statistics for the UK in comparison to other European nations. A tiny proportion of British school children cycle to school, yet in Denmark over 65% of 15 year old boys cycle.

His PEACH Project analyses children's activty patterns on the way to and from school. It turns out that Year 10 Girls that cycle to and from school are SIX times more likely to meet the government's daily activity targets. Other research from Derby seems to be indicating the same - it's not just the cycling, but once kids or adults have been active on their journey, they are more likely to be active at other times in the day too.

The UK government in the 1960's chose to mirror the US and focus on car ownership as am indication of 'progress', with massive investment in building roads and motorways. Elsewhere in Europe it seems there was a more balanced approach and the infrastructure for cycling was established.

It appears the habits of decades will be incredibly tough to reverse as experts and charities in this area desperately try to encourage the car loving British public to jump on a bike rather than getting in the car for even the shortest of journeys.