By Nick Harris
11 May 2015
Sporting Intelligence is pleased to announce a new partnership with sports compression wear company SKINS that will help to maintain this website’s independence – and help to enable the provision of some project funding for young and upcoming sports writers.
The new alliance comes on the heels of www.sportingintelligence.com being named as the Specialist Sports Website of the Year at the SJA British Sports Journalism awards, and as an upgraded version of the site comes online today.
SKINS also becomes a stakeholder in our annual review of global sports salaries, the 2015 edition of which will be published later this month. More details here.
“At SKINS, we instinctively understand that many sports lovers want to go beyond the headline of who scored, what speed a ball was bowled and the prevailing weather conditions,” said SKINS chairman, Jaimie Fuller. “It is one of the reasons that we pursue issues surrounding sport that are critical to the way they’re run.”
SKINS has played a leading role in backing reform in world cycling, has poured funding into anti-doping campaigns in world athletics and is now a leading advocate for the New FIFA Now coalition that seeks to bring about meaningful change in the way world football’s governing body is run. “Sport is one of the most important cultural influences around and SKINS’ values are centred around ‘fuelling the true spirit of competition’,” Fuller says.
Project funding
Sporting Intelligence has assisted a number of young journalists since 2010 to get a foot on the ladder as they seek work in sports writing, and is always open to ideas and collaborative projects from writers, researchers, authors and journalists.
Today we also invite applications for project funding with the hope that we can play a small role in helping you to tell the stories that matter.
You might need £50 for a train ticket to go and interview somebody for a feature. You might need a few hundred pounds to afford a flight and a few nights somewhere to spend a few days digging into an issue you think important.
You may have been working on a project for weeks or months that can’t be completed until you have access to books or research materials or particularly cumbersome FOI requests that you can’t afford.
The funding available is not going to make you rich; it will, hopefully, allow a group of writers to cover subjects that maybe would not otherwise get published. As well as some funding, various contributors and experts who have worked with Sporting Intelligence will be available to offer advice, guidance and contacts to successful applicants.
What type of stories can be funded? Anything, from an interview or feature to a hard news exclusive to a piece of original research or an investigation, as long as it’s on a sporting theme and of potential interest to readers of this site. The aim is to publish any funded work here.
If you’re new to the site, then the pieces linked here will give you a flavour of some of the pieces we’ve carried.
Teddy Cutler on doping in cycling
Roger Pielke Jr on the ‘Tiger effect’ in golf
Alex Miller on the growing value of Premier League sponsorship
A data dive into the football teams that attract the most viewers, and on which channels
Ender Kuyumcu’s two-part exploration of match-fixing in Turkey, here and here
An investigation into match-fixing and doping in tennis
Steve Menary’s probe into the 37 football clubs paying no money for real jobs
Tom Markham’s model of football club evaluation
And assorted investigations into conmen, scoundrels and sporting scandals
What you need to do to apply: Write an outline proposal of the story you want to tell, of no more than 500 words in the first instance, and state the amount of funding you’re seeking, and for what purpose, to tell it. Provide contact details including your name, address, phone number and email, plus up to three examples of your writing to date. These can be links. Put all the above into a single PDF and email it to submissions@sportingintelligence.com with ‘Story funding’ in the subject line. There is no closing date, so don’t rush. Get it right rather than quick.
We will make every effort to respond to every application even if we are not able to fund every one.
There is no age limit. While the funding will probably be most helpful to young writers looking for assistance to get a break, all applications will be considered.
