EMD UK and Sport England appoint Sport Collective

December 10, 2020 Harriet

Sport Collective to develop This Girl Can Classes with EMD UK

EMD UK, the national governing body for group exercise, together with Sport England, has appointed Sport Collective to develop its business plan and implementation strategy for This Girl Can Classes.

This Girl Can celebrates active women who are doing their thing no matter how they do it, how they look or even how sweaty they get. Launched in 2015, nearly three million women have become more active, but there is still a long way to go. Research shows that many women are put off taking part in physical activity due to a fear of judgement – this might be about the way the look when they exercise, that they’re not good enough to join in or they should be spending more time on their families, studies or other priorities.

This Girl Can Classes have been uniquely designed to provoke a sustained behaviour change among inactive women by offering them a fitness class which gives a taster of different group exercise types, building confidence and fitness levels before signposting and supporting their journey into mainstream classes.

Shelley Meyern, Head of Operations at EMD UK said: “We are delighted to be working again with Sport Collective as they have a proven track record in developing successful licensed programmes. It is vital we get the This Girl Can Classes proposition just right to serve the 39% of women in England who are currently inactive”.

Sean McAuliffe, Director of Sport Collective said: “This Girl Can is a hugely successful programme for Sport England and we are honoured to be chosen to support EMD UK to develop a commercial model and launch the This Girl Can Classes concept”.

This Girl Can

Since 2015, Sport England has been working to address the significant gender gap found in sports and exercise, to build women’s confidence around being active, and help them meet the Chief Medical Officer’s guidance.

The campaign was based on the insight that 75% of women say they want to do more sporting activities or exercise, but one of the unifying barriers found to be holding them back is the fear of judgement.

This Girl Can’s objective is to encourage women to engage in physical activity regardless of shape, size, age or ability. For more detail visit www.thisgirlcan.co.uk

EMD UK

EMD UK is the national governing body for group exercise. Funded by Sport England, they have a remit to increase participation in group exercise. They do this in a number of ways including instructor and brand support, instructor training, projects, and partnerships (including Sport

England’s This Girl Can campaign), and providing promotional tools to instructors, such as Classfinder. For more detail visit www.emduk.org

Contact : Brett Pearson, brett@emduk.org +44 (0) 7703463049

Sport Collective

Founded by The FA’s two former commercial heads, Sport Collective is a specialist sports rights and marketing agency working with sports rights holders and brands to maximise commercial strategy and value. Sport Collective has vast experience of managing and executing global to local commercial programmes and business planning. Sport Collective’s training workshops support the sport business leaders of tomorrow. For more detail visit www.sportcollective.com

Contact : Peter Daire, Peter.daire@sportcollective.com +44 (0) 7713 189519