About the Active Fans & Healthy Football League programme

The European Football for Development Network powered Active Fans programme is an Erasmus + Sport funded football-based health programme that kicked off in February 2018 and runs for a period of two-years.

The Active Fans project promotes the aims of the HEPA Guidelines and the true European values of sport and increases the awareness as regards to the role of sport in promoting health-enhancing physical activities, social inclusion and equal opportunities. Furthermore, it insured an increased participation in sport, physical activity and voluntary activity of a hard to reach target group.

9 different member clubs from 6 countries

In collaboration, nine EFDN Network member clubs, coming from six different countries, work on the development and implementation of Active Fans community programmes. Football clubs from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and Norway are involved in implementing the Active Fans methodology which is based on the Football Fans in Training (FFIT) methodology.

The development and optimisation of the Football Fans in Training programme was undertaken by a research team led by Glasgow University on partnership with the SPFL Trust. We gratefully acknowledge some source material from the Nutrition & Dietetic Department, NHS Forth Valley and Men’s Health Clinic, Camelon, Falkirk. The programme development is described in Gray et al (2013), the results of the programme evaluation are reported in Wyke et al (2015) and Hunt et al (2014).

The following clubs are part of the programme:

Inspirational Work

The Active Fans programme, which will be running from January 2018 until June 2020 aims to develop a new European standard and methodology that uses football as a tool to reach men and women from 35 years and older who would like to get physically active again, make lifestyle changes and improve their diets.

Within the Active Fans programme, the participants receive the opportunity to learn about nutrition, get physically active and start to feel the benefits of weight loss and increased energy.

In recent years, a number of clubs and organisations in Europe have developed methodologies for a similar programme, promoting physical activity and healthy lifestyle for that particular target group. The EFDN Active Fans programme will look to develop a common methodology which will be rolled out across Europe.

ESTABLISHMENT OF AN EUROPEAN HEALTHY FOOTBALL LEAGUE

Furthermore, the programme will see the establishment of a Healthy Football League. The Healthy Football League will be an online competition that encourages the participants of the Active Fans programme to make healthy lifestyle choices and gives the possibility to compete online with fans from other clubs to become the healthiest club in Europe. All participants will act as a player in an online app and can score points for their club, long after they have finalised their 12-week programme.

The Healthy Football League website and online app will make it easy to track exercise and it will be simple to use – the more they train, the more points they score to beat the fans of other clubs in the competition.

The Active Fans programme will be tested in nine cities in six European Countries. Every city has its own local Healthy Football League activities and through the online Healthy Football app they will compete with the other clubs in the project.