Women’s football platform victorious at UCFB Sports Entrepreneur Award Competition

The annual UCFB Sports Entrepreneurship Award Competition took place this November, with students presenting their business ideas in front of a UCFB panel at Wembley Stadium.

The event is the latest of the annually held competition where students from UCFB Wembley and UCFB Manchester put forward their innovative ideas in the hope of taking away substantial funding to further their sports business.

The winner of the award this year was Charlotte Thomson, who is studying a postgraduate degree in MSc Football Business.

Charlotte is the founder of the ONE10 Collective, a platform which channels investment into the heart of women’s football by connecting brands and businesses to the game changers of the sport.

Charlotte said after the event: “To have my business received so well and to have other people believe that it has the potential that I know it does is really special.

“It was really interesting and got me thinking around issues around how can I scale it up; I’m just one person. Lots of reflective points as well in terms of going from working in businesses for the best part of 20 years to working by myself and how that’s going to affect me.”

She added, talking about the panel and the support she received: “Thank you. Genuinely, thank you.

“It means a lot, to make a really big decision over the summer not to return to my day job after maternity leave and to really take a step out because I really believe in the commercial growth of women’s football, and that if we do things different, we can grow the game.

“And to have some very senior, very intelligent people who know the business of football very well tell me that my idea is good and it has legs, it means a lot and has given me the push that I needed to carry on, so thank you.”

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