BT Sport gives away up to £100,000 through The Supporters Club charity campaign over open weekend
This weekend, BT Sport and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain launch a ‘thank you’ campaign to promote The Supporters Club - BT Sport’s charitable initiative that helps young disadvantaged people facing life’s toughest challenges, in the UK and overseas.
Every time a person tweets or re-tweets a personal thank you to someone who has supported them with #thesupportersclub, BT Sport will give £1, up to a total of £100,000. This could be their dad for always taking them to training, their coach for helping them get better at sport, their teacher for always helping them get through exams or their friends for always being there for them.
BT Sport will broadcast a range of on-air features involving BT Sport ambassador Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain talking about those who have supported him during his career.
Those with regular Freeview and BT TV customers who have not yet joined BT Sport can tune in to Freeview Channel 57 to watch BT Sport 1 between the hours of Friday (6pm – 4am), Saturday (11.30am – 4am) and Sunday (11.30am – 6am). From 6pm Friday 25th October until 6am Monday 28th October, BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2 and ESPN are available to all Sky or Virgin viewers.
This ‘Open Weekend’ is a way for BT Sport to thank the thousands of customers already raising hundreds of thousands of pounds and to encourage others to join in too by being part of a team creating a better future for young people through sport. Viewers can show their support and join The Supporters Club by simply adding £1, £3 or £5 to their monthly bill and BT will match it pound for pound – doubling the donation every time , up to a total of £1 million.
To support the initiative, Oxlade-Chamberlain this week visited Street Games – a national sports charity that uses mentoring and community projects to change the lives of young people in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the UK. Money raised by The Supporters Club will be used to launch a new Street Games project to tackle youth unemployment in Scotland and Wales from January 2014.
Oxlade-Chamberlain, said “My Dad played such a big part in my childhood and development to become a professional footballer – supporting me training, driving me to games and always pushing me forward. I would urge people to thank someone this weekend via Twitter who helped them out in life – be it in their sporting or personal lives. What’s more, BT Sport will donate money to good causes when you do.”
The Supporters Club is raising hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations this year with the money going to a variety of good causes. This includes a youth programme, founded by rugby star and BT Sport presenter
Lawrence Dallaglio - Dallaglio Foundation Rugby for Change – which earlier this month featured in the documentary, The Supporters Club: Lawrence Dallaglio's Game Changer televised on BT Sport. Other charities being supported in the UK and overseas will be revealed in the coming months. BT is covering the costs of The Supporters Club fund, which is managed by Comic Relief. This means every pound will work as hard as possible to change lives. The documentaries featuring some of the projects benefiting can be viewed on BT Sport and online allowing viewers to see their difference their donations are making.
The Supporters Club is also supporting:
• Riding for the Disabled which provides therapeutic support for disabled children and young people across the UK through horse-riding
• IBISS, a charity working in the toughest 60 slum communities in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), where many children’s lives are affected by violence and drug gangs
• Karunalaya, a charity working on the streets of Chennai (India). It supports hundreds of children living around the railway station and seven slum areas
• Caretakers of the Environment, a charity in Tanzania, which helps street children living in Mwanza, Tanzania
BT Sport customers who wish to join The Supporters Club can send a text with the word ‘JOIN’ followed by their home phone number to 82010, to add £1 a month to their BT bill. For full T&Cs and more information visit
www.thesupportersclub.org or follow @supporters on twitter. The Supporters Club fund is managed by Comic Relief, registered charity No. 326568 (England/Wales); SC039730 (Scotland).
Terms and Conditions
BT Sport will donate £1 for the first 100k tweets or re-tweets of #thesupportersclub between 6pm Friday 25th October until 6am Monday 28th October. BT will measure tweets using mass relevance and will discount people tweeting without a profile picture , people with no followers, people using profanity, known spam/problem accounts, non-english language accounts , auto feed tools . This is part of the £500,000 commitment that BT Sport is donating to The Supporters Club through various initiatives.
