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Watch: WFS Live Day 1 – Takeaways and highlights
Watch: WFS Live Day 1 – Takeaways and highlights 573 314 WFS Live

WFS LIVE kicked off today with six insightful panel discussions that saw leaders from across the global sports industry reflect on how the different stakeholders can contribute to making football a more purpose driven sport and business. As Common Goal Founder Jürgen Griesbeck pointed out, the industry will necessarily need to shift “from a charity and giving back perspective on contribution to a DNA  perspective” in order to engage with modern fans, who according to different experts “vote with their values.”

“If you misalign with their values, whether it’s all the safety values for athletes that you’re not looking at or it’s social injustice that you’re not addressing or it’s gender inequality, there’s a whole list of things,” former olympic champion and CEO of Sports Innovation Lab Angela Ruggiero said, “there’s a misalignment and these fluid and more fickle fans may not buy your tickets or watch your content.”

“LET’S FACE IT: FOOTBALL DOESN’T HAVE A GOOD IMAGE”
Jacques-Henri Eyraud – CEO, Olympique Marseille

“Let’s face it: football doesn’t have a good image. Football is the universal sport, the number 1 source of entertainment across the world, but I don’t think we have a great image. We certainly need to improve it and that should be very high on the agenda, on our list of priorities and even more so after the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“IT’S NOT HARSH TO SAY FOOTBALL HAS BEEN LIVING IN A BUBBLE”
Jürgen Griesbeck – Co-Founder, Common Goal

“It’s not too harsh to say that football has been living in a bubble, where it didn’t have to question itself too much because despite the financial crisis or the crisis in reputation of some of its institutions, it just has continued to grow year over year. Maybe now it’s the time for football to accept that it can play a leading role, and not just because it’s the right thing to do but because it is the smart thing to do, and move from a charity and giving back perspective on contribution to more of a DNA  perspective.”

“WOMEN ARE DRIVING SUCCES IN SPORTS”
Lisa Baird – Commissioner, NWSL

“I do think that legislation and quotas can play a role for countries that need to come a little quicker, but I also think that we should be equally talking about how women are driving success in sports. That’s happening now, we don’t have to say: ‘put us there because we are women’, but ‘put us there because we are successful’. That’s a new part of the conversation that I think we should all be incredibly proud of.”

“WOMEN’S FOOTBALL REPRESENTS ALL THE VALUES THAT FOOTBALL WAS INITIALLY MEANT TO BE” 
Ebrü Koksal – Chair, Women in Football

“Women’s football is like a blank white page. On one hand, men’s football can be extremely crowded in terms of the sponsor’s ability to activate the sponsorship rights and the message that they are giving, but women’s football still represents predominantly all the values that football was initially meant to be. It’s more about family values, more about competition and technical abilities on the pitch. That’s why brands like Barclays, Visa, Nike or Budweiser, who saw this significant opportunity, are benefiting from the first-comers advantage.”

“AS A PERSON WITH INTELECTUAL DISABILITY, I’VE BEEN ISOLATED ALL MY LIFE”
Loretta Claiborne – Chief Inspiration Officer; Vice Chair, Board of Directors, Special Olympics

“I was always told to shut up, we don’t want to hear from you. They used the “r” word, which is “retard”. We don’t use that anymore, we use intelectual disability because first of all we are people first. When I look back at my life and I think about today, this whole thing with Covid-19, being a person with intelectual disability, we’ve been isolated all our lives.”

“ATHLETES DON’T HAVE THE OBLIGATION TO SPEAK UP”
Arianna Criscione – Player, Paris Saint-Germain

“I don’t think any athlete has the obligation to speak up if that’s not what they believe or that’s not their platform or if they don’t know where their voice comes from. As an athlete, your obligation is to play your sport or to perform the way you want. Any person, if you have a platform that you want to use in order for social change because it’s something you truly believe in, then I think you should step up and speak, but I don’t think that just because you are an athlete you should step up.”

“CSR CAN NO LONGER BE A TICK BOX EXERCISE ON AN ANNUAL REPORT”
Charlotte Kirby – Vice President Global Strategic Relations, Sales Force

“CSR can no longer be a tick box exercise on an annual report. I’ve heard so many people say things like ‘you can’t just paint fences and call that giving back’, ‘you can’t just put your name on a football shirt and say that that is part of your philanthropic giving’. Society has moved on from that.”

“IF YOU MISALIGN WITH THE VALUES OF FLUID FANS, THEY MAY NOT BUY YOUR TICKETS”
Angela Ruggiero – CEO of Sports Innovation Lab

“One key component of a fluid fan is that they vote with their values. If you misalign with their values, whether it’s all the safety values for athletes that you’re not looking at or it’s social injustice that you’re not addressing or it’s gender inequality, there’s a whole list of things. There’s a misalignment and these fluid and more fickle fans may not buy your tickets or watch your content.”

“WE NEED TO CHANGE THE IMAGE THAT ATHLETES ARE JUST ROBOTS”
Johan Djourou – Footballer, FC Nordsjælland

“This image that athletes are just robots and that they are there to win the points or the league but they don’t have feelings. That’s totally wrong because at the end of the day we play with our emotions. When we are on the pitch, we play with what we have in our guts and in our hearts, we give everything to try to win and to make the people that follow us happy, so we definitely have hearts and feelings.”

“COMMON GOAL GIVES ME A DEEPER MEANING OF WHAT BEING A FOOTBALL PLAYER IS”
Juan Mata – Footballer, Manchester United / Co-Founder, Common Goal

“I have been lucky enough to play for a number of years as a professional football player and win trophies and live incredible experiences thanks to football. But to be able to be a part of a movement which is trying to use the power of football as a social tool for change, I feel that it’s creating a legacy, that after we stop playing football we will feel proud that we started a way in which people can actually help. It gives me an incredible sense of pride, of hope and of passion for what I do on the pitch, but specially off the pitch.”

“PURPOSE MARKETING HAS THE POWER TO INSPIRE PEOPLE TO TAKE ACTION”
Dan Burrows – Senior Director, EMEA | Social & Community Impact, Nike

“It’s important that we recognise the role that purpose marketing or messaging has to inspire people to take actions. I think there is a really genuine role that purpose marketing can lead. I think that has to go hand in hand, as it goes at Nike, with direct investment into communities and it really being focused on impact and really looking to measure that impact as well.”

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