UK Sponsorship Awards 2023 Winners!

On Tuesday the 28th of March, Skateboard GB won the UK Sponsorship Awards 2023 Grass Roots Sports category award for our partnership with Habito through 2021-22.  

The awards, at the London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, welcomed hundreds of guests across the sports, art and culture, entertainment and events and education and learning sectors. Heineken’s ground-breaking ‘cheers to all fans’, entered by M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment, was named as Sponsorship of the Year.  Our category, sponsored by the Sport and Recreation Alliance, celebrated organisations and sponsors who truly reach out to local communities and deliver with social purpose to achieve lasting impacts.

Skateboard GB’s winning entry was for our work with Habito to build a partnership with purpose, to engage and empower UK communities by unlocking skateboarding’s ability to regenerate urban areas through DIY and community-led facilities and wider grassroots development programmes.

Whilst there have been major sponsorship partners at grassroots level for decades in traditional sports (football, cricket, boxing etc.), skateboarding has never had this and as such has been greatly underrepresented. Habito understood there was a unique opportunity to be leaders in this respect and it was fantastic to work with a non-skateboarding brand who saw the potential of supporting the sport and that by working with us, they could have a positive impact on the community.

Together, Skateboard GB and Habito set out to support a total of eight DIY or community-led projects, ‘skate friendly’ public realm and ‘pop-up’ installations around England, all of which rejuvenated run-down or under-used urban spaces.  These projects included the incredible Bournbrook DIY in Birmingham, Hackney Bumps, The Grove DIY in Dulwich, the Undercover Skatepark Project in Portsmouth and Tram Line Spot in Nottingham. Habito contributed modest but essential funding towards this project which enabled its success, funding the development of the skateable spaces and also a dedicated Community Development role in Skateboard GB for 12 months.

The Grassroots Skatespaces have transformed derelict wasteland and unused dangerous sites into welcoming hubs for skateboarders and the wider local communities. During the programme we held seven events which engaged over 2,000 skateboarders of different ages and abilities. Across the eight skate-spaces, between 1,100 and 1,700 skaters now use the facilities every week.

This is the second national award Skateboard GB and Habito have won for our partnership, following our Sports Business Awards gold award in the Sponsorship or Partnership of the Year category at The Oval in November, which included recognition of the Grassroots Skatespaces project alongside Habito’s support of our 2021 and 2022 National Championships.

Winning both these awards is fantastic recognition of the impact the Grassroots Skatespaces continue to have for their communities, and an indication of just how much is possible for brands and organisations that pioneer partnerships in skateboarding with Skateboard GB.

Ahead of Paris 2024 Skateboard GB is uniquely placed to help brands authentically align themselves to skateboarding and all of the amazing values skateboarding and its diverse communities embody. We are looking for brands who want to create purpose-led partnerships with us as well as coming on an exciting journey as we look to develop and grow this amazing youth-centred sport.