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Lew Carroll of Burnley FC’s commercial department said:
"We are staging a campaign to encourage all our supporters to ditch the car and cycle to the game for the last game of the season."
Burnley is in the Football League Championship, the division below the Premier League.
The club’s last home match of the season is against Cardiff City.
Alan Shearer might be about to ride 335 miles in two days for Sport Relief but, generally, football clubs and footballers have little to do with cycling.
And football supporters are not noted for their choice of sustainable transport for getting to and from matches. In last night’s The Woman Who Stops Traffic on Channel 4, Kris Murrin was hissed from the pitch when she asked Boston United supporters to ditch their cars for Boston’s No Car Day.
Clearly, Burnley Football Club is more enlightened than lowly Boston United. Carroll said companies can piggyback on the bike-to-the-match promotion, with 25 percent of the monies raised going to Leukaemia research and 75 percent to the club’s youth development and community schemes.
"This ticks a whole host of Corporate Social Responsibility boxes for any company. It also promotes healthy lifestyles within the area through the vehicle of the football club," said Carroll.
‘We would be looking for a nominal donation which we could back up with a full inventory package of advertising and promotional branding. For the full weight of the PR department we can put the brand into the public mind as a generous business willing to help worthwhile causes. How much would that kind of branding and PR cost any company?"
Carroll said the suggested donations start at about £1000 and this would be generate mentions on the club website and the Football League website as well as many media mentions. Company logos would also go in the match programme and on Turf Moor’s giant stadium screen on match day.
