Bloomsbury Football and Footy Addicts partner to BRING THE GAME TO EVERYONE

Bloomsbury Football is thrilled to announce our newfound partnership with Footy Addicts.

Footy Addicts is a social platform that connects football enthusiasts, as they believe players should have the ability to play football anytime, any place. With a growing community of over 100,000 users in London, and over 450 grassroots games organised every week, Footy Addicts has enabled footballers to discover, organise, and join games.

As an adult, unless you have a team or large group of friends to play with, it can be difficult to find chances to play. Footy Addicts was developed to solve this problem and makes it more convenient for people to organise, find and play matches, with the focus being participation and enjoyment of the game, creating a welcoming atmosphere for people to play, meet new people and stay healthy.

This partnership will connect the Bloomsbury Football and Footy Addicts communities, amplifying participation in football: parents and older siblings of children that are members of Bloomsbury will be invited to play in local Footy Addicts games through a voucher scheme. Furthermore, Footy Addicts have joined us on the mission to ensure that every child has the opportunity to play football regardless of their ability to pay, as they’ll be promoting our fundraising campaign, to which you can donate.

Charlie Hyman, CEO and Founder of Bloomsbury Football, welcomed the partnership, avowing that “we’re excited to be partnering with Footy Addicts, an organisation that shares our vision that football should be for everyone and our belief in its power to bring people together. Our work together will ensure that our young people have access to the Footy Addicts platform. This will support them to continue playing football as they transition into adulthood. As always, we are doing what we can to equalise access to sport”. Jonathan Suárez, Director and Co-Founder of Footy Addicts, said that he’s “excited about the opportunity to work with a forward-thinking and impactful organisation like Bloomsbury Football and assist in the wider mission of giving access to football to young people as well as adults”.

Both Bloomsbury Football and Footy Addicts recognise there are currently not enough opportunities for girls and women to play football in London. We both also appreciate the positive externalities bound by the sport, Bloomsbury Football and Footy Addicts played a key role in facilitating the safe return of football in London after the first lockdown. We heard from many of our participants that over lockdown they recognised how important playing football was to their physical and mental wellbeing, and we’re committed to providing this important service again and enabling everybody to get back out on the pitch. Sport England recently launched ‘Uniting the Movement’, a ten-year strategy which commits to adapting and rebuilding from the huge disruption caused by the pandemic. The strategy encourages all of us to reimagine how we keep movement, activity and sport central to everyone’s lives.

Aligned by the same beliefs, we tackle this assignment in unison. By working together, we will enable more children and parents to play the beautiful game.