Maximizing the local impact of major sporting events

At our second hosting in 2018, we supported community and sports clubs to open their facilities along the route and invite the community.

This allowed us to set up numerous ‘mini fan zones’ to watch the race on TV and live in passing, and also helped organizations reach new audiences.

Many of them still hold coffee mornings to bring together older people in their community as a result of the original event.

Important things to consider

However, engagement doesn’t happen overnight and you need to plan and prepare well in advance of the event to maximize impact.

Try to make this as seamless as possible and clean up what we call “sludge”.

Mud is anything that makes your club or activities difficult to access or a potential barrier to participation.

This can be as simple as not updating contact numbers on your website, or promotional material that uses very technical language that is difficult to understand.

Organizations also need to be prepared for the expected influx of new members, and this requires you to plan months in advance.

Many of these big events are planned years in advance, so get involved in discussions early as you will need to repeat this.

Think about:

• Training and development of volunteers in advance of the event
• how you organize introductory events – consider giving free samples
• Having a welcoming face to meet and greet new attendees and members.

The hardest step for someone coming to an activity for the first time is the first step and you need to make it as easy as possible.

As council officers, we must reconsider our role in this process, plan together with our community clubs and groups, and where possible, fund volunteer training and free up other resources to support grassroots organizations.

For example, in Doncaster we developed a very simple micro-grant scheme that enabled us to support and help 33 groups (11,000 people), many previously unengaged, to compete in TDY and UCI Road World Championships.

To help clubs, professionals and organisers, Get Doncaster Moving is launching the GAMEPLAN book, which brings together all of our insights into one easy-to-use guide.