Societal overview of football :

the reference report on the social impact of French football

Following the three previous editions in 2011, 2013 and 2016, the Football Foundation published the 4^th Societal overview of football this year, to measure the social impact of the sport.

“Whatever I know about morality, I owe to football” said the French philosopher Albert Camus. Figures from the Societal overview of football 2020 support this quotation: football really is the third place for education, after school and the home.

Created in 2008, the Football Foundation is French football’s endowment fund. It is financed by bodies such as the FFF, and by sponsors. Its aim is to promote responsible, sustainable football by putting in place innovative measures and by sharing a citizenship vision of football. Since 2010, promoting the social, citizenship role of football has been a major challenge for the Foundation.

To measure and promote this social impact, the Foundation regularly publishes a Societal overview of football. The role of this overview is to set out the current state of French football in all its aspects: volunteering, women’s football, education, sustainable development and so on. This snapshot of French football, particularly of amateur clubs, makes it possible to break with the usual, pejorative, received ideas about football.

“24% of clubs welcome refugees”

For 2020, the Foundation carried out a detailed statistical survey in a sample of 2,150 clubs, with the help of FFF data, to produce this fourth edition. It highlights 17 key figures in three big thematic areas: responsible football, solidarity football and inclusive football. It shows that a third of boys and girls are members of a football club before they reach 18, that clubs donate 7.2 million euros to good causes, that 24% of clubs welcome refugees, and that “Zero waste” is a priority for 76% of clubs. Although the season was marked by Covid-19, the Societal overview of football states that more than one out of two clubs put in place social, citizenship schemes in the face of the epidemic, which proves how resilient football is.

Apart from measuring social impact, the Societal overview of football is a real guide to decision-making for French football bodies. The additional knowledge about clubs and their members will enable the FFF to design federal action in line with changes in society. This tool also encourages amateur clubs to follow the example and get involved in more responsible, supportive and inclusive approaches.