“The Collective Thread” – A Kit Hackathon Series Working with the Premier League, Uni of Greenwich and Football Beyond Borders
Sponsored by the Premier League, Pledgeball's Kit Hackathon explored more sustainable solutions to the issue presented by producing football kit.
How can kit culture be more sustainable without sacrificing profitability?
In a recent collaboration with the Premier League, Pledgeball set a group of university students the challenge of coming up with a sustainable solution to football fashion.
Football shirts are more than just a piece of clothing for fans to wear, they’re a uniting identity for fans to support their club whilst also serving as a commercial lifeline for teams.
However, due to clubs releasing new kits every season, unused and discarded shirts pile up year after year, causing environmental damage and fuelling fashion waste.
For clubs, simply selling less shirts is not a viable option due to the invaluable income they provide.
The question becomes; how can we make kit culture more sustainable without sacrificing profitability?
This is the exact dilemma participants in Pledgeball’s Hackathon were given.
On the 25 October, a group of students assembled at the University of Greenwich and were given the challenge to devise and present new sustainable alternatives to football kit production.
The main goal of the Hackathon was to ask how clubs can reduce kit and merchandise waste by changing the way they think about selling existing shirts.
Groups were tasked with coming up with a strategy for clubs to adopt a sustainable kit culture while maintaining their fan engagement.
This created an open discussion over what viable and sustainable alternatives to kit productions football clubs could adopt.
During the process, students were mentored by Joanna Czutkowna from 5Thread, an expert on sustainable sports apparel.
"I am looking for creativity. Ideas that are outside of the box. We need passion and enthusiasm, to see that people have really thought through their ideas." - Joanna
After forming and refining their ideas, the groups then pitched them to a panel of judges, including Joanna, Julie Brown, the Head of Innovation at Crystal Palace, and Pledgeball’s very own CEO, Katie Cross.
The winning group of students were given the opportunity to further their ideas before presenting it to Crystal Palace’s commercial team.
Speaking at the event, Katie said “It was fantastic to see so many young people bring such innovation and passion to the challenge.
“The hackathon really showed how much this new generation cares about protecting the things we love.
“We’re not seeing change fast enough to protect the things we care about, and Pledgeball exists to rally fans to show that people genuinely do care and can help drive that change.”
It was a thought-provoking and inspiring event, and Pledgeball hopes to run more Hackathons in the future across the UK in further collaboration with the Premier League.
This Hackathon idea builds on a previously held Hackathon at the University of Greenwich, where students from Football Beyond Borders’s “Architects of the Future” Cohort were invited to design their own kits of the future. More to come on this, as we are currently getting these kits produced…