Here to Play, Here to Stay
Football Foundation, 2023
Using Lionesses’ legacy to turn grassroots investment into a national story.
MY ROLE
Led the content strategy, shaping the campaign narrative, naming and messaging for Here to Play, Here to Stay.
CONTEXT
Following UEFA Women’s EURO 2022, the Football Foundation invested heavily in women and girls’ grassroots football through the Lionesses Futures Fund.
Pitches across England were redeveloped and named after the victorious Lionesses who’d played there growing up.
Pitch naming gave the programme a clear public identity, but the wider rollout felt fragmented and lacked a clear strategy. Announcements landed one by one, without building a bigger picture of what the investment meant across the country.
The campaign needed to link the Euro 2022 win back to grassroots football and make the scale of the investment easier to understand.
STRATEGY
The campaign connected the Foundation’s investment with the Lionesses’ journey to the top.
Pitch naming became the centrepiece, linking Lionesses back to the pitches where they first played and rooting the investment in grassroots football. The approach resonated locally while contributing to a wider national story.
Each announcement built on the last, gradually building a wider national picture of the investment across England.
Here to Play, Here to Stay became the campaign line, capturing both the investment’s immediate impact and its long-term commitment.
Using the Lionesses’ profiles, the content connected individual announcements to a broader national story about access, opportunity and the future of women’s football.
Working with design agency Studio Mean, we developed a visual system built around real pitches, communities and locations, with formats designed to scale.
WHAT CHANGED
The Futures Fund became anchored to the Lionesses’ story, bringing it to a wider audience beyond the Foundation’s own channels.
Each new facility reinforced the wider campaign, connecting the Lionesses’ success back to grassroots access across England.
Here to Play, Here to Stay gave the Premier League, The FA and Government a shared platform to talk about long-term investment in women’s and girl’s football.
BROADCAST FEATURES
across BBC, ITV and Sky Sports News
1.2M
views on our Lionesses' pitch naming content
NATIONAL LEGACY
created the legacy framework that shaped the Lionesses Futures Fund
Images & Video: Football Foundation, TMG