Focus on Youth, Football and Alcohol – an EU funded project

The F.Y.F.A. project, focused mostly on football-specific clubs, the learning from this project should inform policy and practice across other contexts where young people take part in sports and where there are therefore opportunities for preventative interventions.

This project aims at generating good practices targeting the reduction of heavy episodic drinking among young people and has developed recommendations for youth sport clubs regarding alcohol across EU.

Underage drinking and heavy episodic drinking of alcohol is of concern in Europe because it is related to the health and welfare of a more vulnerable segment of the population. The scientific literature underlines the link between alcohol use by young people to various problems including risky sexual behaviour, arguments, accidents, and health problems. There is also clear evidence of a likely causal relationship between alcohol use in adolescence and damaging structural changes to the brain. The immediate (acute) effects of excess alcohol consumption include vomiting, injury, coma, and hypothermia.

On the other hand, sports are one of the most popular organized activities for young people in Europe. It is an arena that is underused as a target for policy and behaviour change. Sports reaches many different groups – both peer leaders and vulnerable youth. The relationships with reliable and stable adult youth leaders in that frame of reference, are important for many vulnerable young people.

Therefore, we underline this context’s potential for prevention/health promotion and the possibilities for shaping positive attitudes and behaviour change. Over the year’s sports sponsorships have been used to promote alcohol and marketing, creating a platform for strong marketing, loyalties, and experiences. We believe decision makers and sport leaders have neither provided enough attention to the association between the harm done by alcohol nor acknowledged how sponsorship of alcohol allows for the association of alcohol consumption with the health and vigour associated with professional sports.

Although the F.Y.F.A. project, focused mostly on football-specific clubs, the learning from this project should inform policy and practice across other contexts where young people take part in sports and where there are therefore opportunities for preventative interventions.

This project aims at generating good practices targeting the reduction of heavy episodic drinking among young people and has developed recommendations for youth sport clubs regarding alcohol across EU. In brief, our project has:
1)           Reviewed policies related to young people, sport, marketing, and alcohol with a focus on football on international, national and local level.
2)           Interviewed relevant stakeholders and decision makers at international, national, and local level regarding young people, sport, marketing, and alcohol. (WP 4 and 5)
3)           Identified one local youth football club in six Member States, where young people (aged 13-15) participate in regular sporting activities
4)           Interviewed football club management to find out: attitudes, strategies to reduce drinking and harms for young people (WP 6) 
5)           Conducted semi-structured interviews with young people in six countries to discuss and to produce recommendations to policy makers about young people, sport, marketing and alcohol. (WP7) 
6)           Made videos in three settings, using ESPAD framework – with 6 young women and 6 young men aged between 13 and 15 from three countries.(WP 8) 
7)           Amalgamated the country videos into one main movie with sub-titles for different countries which is available on Youtube. See https://www.fyfaproject.eu/resource.php#Videoclips 
8)           Strengthening capacity of the stakeholders and partners involved through EU networking and good practice exchange. (WP 9)
9)           Held an international conference on Alcohol, Sport and Youth as a webinar – launching the project video where the F.Y.F.A. project findings and recommendations will be shared and discussed. https://www.fyfaproject.eu/resource.php?sp=fyfa-webinar

The project has generated a report and specific recommendations. For further information, please check our FYFA website: www.fyfaproject.eu or send us an email @info@eurocare.org   
28.09.2020