Help Hope Beat Hate. "Lead by example and be kind online." - @JHenderson Help tackle online abuse by taking part in BT and Cybersmile's online modules. 🔗 https://t.co/NYtAnMQ66a https://t.co/ElJ7MEfwmC
@btsport . 14 Feb 2022
Following on from a hugely successful summer 2021 campaign, we wanted to continue the Hope United legacy, leveraging our BT Connected Club network and help empower the nation to tackle online hate.
Research commissioned by BT found that 1 in 10 people have received online abuse in the past year. Partnering with Cybersmile, a multi-award-winning non-profit, committed to digital wellbeing and tackling abuse online, we have created three bespoke educational modules. These focus on upskilling and teaching best practice digital citizenship, the impact of online hate and the positive impact of hope. The ambition is to deliver powerful workshops to eight Connected Clubs (two in each Home Nation), taking grassroots football clubs through the modules, followed by a football masterclass led by a current player or legend.
We created a special one-off TV show to celebrate the return of grassroots football after lockdown restrictions eased.
Presented by BT Sport duo Jules Breach and Robbie Savage, the show features England youngsters Mason Mount, Declan Rice and Ben Chilwell, Northern Ireland brothers Jonny and Corry Evans, Wales’ 100-cap hero Chris Gunter and Manchester United’s Daniel James with Scotland duo Craig Gordan and Stephen O’Donnell.
‘The Grassroots Football Show’ was hosted at Horsforth St Margaret’s FC, one of BT’s ‘Connected Club’s’ in Leeds, England. As part of BT’s transformational 4-3-3 partnership strategy, BT made the commitment to provide 200 grassroots clubs across the UK with a package of free products and services including the very best broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity – to support their role as hubs for the local community.
Our ambition is to connect over 200 grassroots community football clubs across the home nations with a package of BT products and services, including wi-fi, broadband and landline.
Despite complications caused by Covid-19, we have been able to connect 50 clubs remotely since May 2020. In the next six months, we will reach out to a further 128 clubs ensuring we hit our target of 100 clubs connected in the first year of our partnership.
We launched the FA Playmaker course to BT employees via a live broadcast from the BT Sport studio.
This recapped on the 4-3-3 strategy and landed the importance of volunteering for when the grassroots football returns.
A key objective for the Home Nations partnership is to support the overall BT brand objective of upskilling 10m British people with essential digital skills. To do this we redesigned the Work Ready comms to tap into Northern Ireland’s passion for football, reaching & attracting new audiences to the course taking place in Belfast.
We engaged football fan platform COPA90, to help us capture and tell the story of Michael, one of the participants who joined the Work Ready course thanks to his love of football & BT’s promotion of the opportunity with the IFA.
We rewarded the children of key workers who were still attending primary school in lockdown by virtually connecting them to male and female Home Nations players who were former pupils themselves.
We created both combined and individual home nation FA content edits, that were organically shared across BT and each FA's social channels.
As part of the wider BT business objective, we included a call to action in the edits for parents who are home-schooling their children to visit the ‘Skills for Tomorrow’ website for resources that could help support them.
