Creating awareness of football's social impact

This is evident from the report 'The social impact of professional football in the Netherlands', which was presented yesterday during an event with MPs in The Hague. PwC and the KNVB investigated the social impact of professional football for the third time. According to Anthony Blokland, club advisor for professional football at the KNVB, 'a great way to show society that professional football contributes both directly and indirectly to social themes.' 

The report shows clear figures within the five themes of the study (connection, well-being, education, economy and sustainability). As mentioned, 44 per cent of football fans indicate that professional football contributes to their social network and 48 per cent of respondents say that professional football contributes to their mental well-being. Furthermore, professional football organisations (BVOs) invest more than 45 million euros annually in their youth training. Professional football also makes a direct contribution to the gross domestic product (2.83 billion euros). 

According to Blokland, these figures show that the social impact of professional football is significant. ' Looking at, among other things, the occupancy rate of the stadiums, professional football is only getting bigger. The publication of the report, in combination with the event surrounding the European Championship match against Austria, is intended to create more awareness within politics, society and the industry.'

The KNVB has several strategic pillars and Blokland, as club advisor, has the task of furthering this programming within the clubs. 'Within professional football, our focus is on visible social impact, professional football at a higher level, and hospitable and safe football. The study and this report are part of that.' 

The KNVB had already collected quite a bit of data and asked PwC to once again publish a report on this theme. Blokland: 'We want a report that is as independent as possible, in addition to the fact that PwC is a trusted partner.' 

Dante van der Heijden, involved in the study from PwC, adds: 'To guarantee this independence, we used as much raw data as possible. Together with the KNVB we determined the goal and what data we needed.'

'We have also compared the data with the reports from 2015 and 2021, but a lot has changed since then. Especially in the field of sustainability, which is now a much broader theme. Moreover, the 2021 report dates from the corona period, so it can't really be a one-to-one comparison,’ Van der Heijden explains.

In addition to the positive impact, the report also highlights the challenges in practice. The theme of sustainability, for example, still proves difficult to measure. ‘There was little data available,’ says Van der Heijden. 'It does not mean that clubs aren't doing anything, but there is little to be found on their websites.' 

There is also still work to be done in the field of safety. 57 per cent of season ticket holders say they sometimes worry about safety in and around the stadium. The KNVB has several initiatives underway to combat this negative social impact. ‘One of our objectives is hospitable and safe football,’ says Blokland. 'We have drawn up a roadmap for this, which will give us more and more control over the situation. In addition, in 2020 we started the OVIVI initiative, Our Football Belongs to Everyone, to combat racism and discrimination in football. We do this at both amateur and professional football level. And we are also working on it within the KNVB itself. If we want to direct the clubs to this, we have to be a forerunner ourselves.'