Here’s another initiative from my home county of Lancashire.
Burnley Football Club (long loved by Labour PR Specialist Alastair Campbell who was tweeting away at the Saatchi 40th birthday party last year) is opening UCFB, the College of Football Business at its Turf Moor ground. This is a great idea. Sport is the 8th biggest business in the world and football is growing exponentially, particularly in the UK where the Barclays Premier League is driving astonishing financial returns. (My younger son, Dan, is hoping to join Manchester City to use his digital/planning/production skills and is also hoping to do a Master’s Degree at FIFA.) For Burnley to take this initiative from its small grassroots community is terrific. I’m sure Manchester City are thinking of also putting significant investment into the grassroots and the development of the game in Manchester and I hope that Auckland University will take a similar position on Rugby Union in New Zealand.
Sport has now become a major business and is a way people can marry their passion with their expertise to fulfill their ambitions off the field as well as on it.
Lancashire Life magazine welcomed Burnley’s initiative and said that they hoped there would be modules on:
a) how to understand what Sir Alex Ferguson is saying,
b) how to tie your scarf like Roberto Mancini.
