The weight loss feats of Scottish football fans will get UEFA Champions League status this week, being screened to a German TV audience of millions after live coverage of Arsenal v Bayern Munich on Wednesday.
Supporters of 13 SPFL clubs made headlines earlier this year after shedding almost 2,000kg combined thanks to the success of a new training programme established for fans.
The Football Fans in Training programme* (FFIT) – which helps male football fans feel better and lose weight by living a healthier lifestyle, taking more exercise and improving their diet – was declared a resounding success, according to new research published in The Lancet and BMC Public Health.
The success story commanded column inches in both mainstream and health media in Scotland and across the UK and in addition, due to the unique nature of the programme and its participants, was also quickly picked up by newspapers, sports magazines and bloggers across the world.
One of the most unexpected media outlets to contact the SPFL Trust and University of Glasgow, which partnered on the programme, was German channel ZDF, who duly arranged to film Dunfermline Athletic supporters enjoying FFIT classes at the club’s East End Park home.
The result is a four-and-a-half minute package being broadcast immediately after the conclusion of Wednesday’s Arsenal v Bayern Munich UEFA Champions League Round of 16 first leg live on ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), one of the biggest TV channels in Germany.
Billy Singh, General Manager of the SPFL Trust which worked in partnership with clubs to encourage their involvement in the programme, said: “The interest in FFIT since we announced the success of the programme last month has been phenomenal, leading to huge interest within Scotland but also all manner of positive commentary from everywhere from Hamburg to Houston.
“This Wednesday’s broadcast on such a major European TV channel, not to mention during a programme showing a game of true global interest, is another brilliant endorsement of what has been achieved and will push more positive messages about Scottish football to a wider audience.”
FFIT, funded by the Scottish Government and The Football Pools, is free for participants and has run for three seasons at Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) clubs. The recent research, led by the University of Glasgow, shows that FFIT has proved extremely popular with men, and its effectiveness and value for money have now been clearly demonstrated in one of the world’s first randomised control trials (RCT) of a health programme delivered through professional sports clubs.
Professor Sally Wyke, one of the two Principal Investigators from the University of Glasgow said: “It has been heartening to see all the positive publicity throughout the world following the ‘gold standard’ evidence that the FFIT programme can help men lose weight and keep it off.
“So much of the credit should go to all those who have taken part in the programme and really stuck at it - after 12 months, the difference in weight loss between men who did the programme and men in a comparison group, who did not do the programme, was 4.94kg.”
Among the highlights from the recently published results are:
• St Johnstone fans managed to achieve the greatest mean weight loss, shifting an average of 8kg (or 8.3% of their total weight) over a 12-month period
• Celtic and Rangers were the top two in total weight loss over 12 months, with their fans losing 271.1kg and 213.3 kg respectively
• The average participant of all clubs was a 47-year-old male, achieving 5.6kg (5%) weight loss and 7.3cm from his waistline over the 12-month period
• Combined, all participants lost a collective 23m from their waistlines, more than double the distance from a penalty spot to the goal-line
Neil Doncaster, SPFL chief executive, said: “The visit by our football broadcasting friends from Germany was very welcome and more evidence that Scottish football and the positive impact it can have on society continues to make waves across Europe and beyond.”
Bob Winter OBE, chairman of The SPFL Trust, added: “The Scottish Professional Football League Trust works in partnership with the 42 professional football clubs in Scotland to create opportunities at the heart of our communities that bring people together and change lives for the better. This is more evidence that the programmes we are activating throughout Scotland, across the pillars of activity of health, citizenship, achievement and participation, are working and immense credit must go to the driving forces behind FFIT as well as the fans themselves.”
In 2011, FFIT won a European Professional Football League (EPFL) Best Practice Award in the Social Responsibility category.
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