Just over a month ago, German soccer powerhouse FC Bayern Munich and local soccer academy Toronto Blizzard jointly announced a significant sporting partnership that could dramatically enhance professional playing opportunities for Canadian youth. The two organizations agreed to a comprehensive grassroots program with the aim to provide young soccer players the chance to learn and develop as an FC Bayern player and open new pathways for Canadian athletes.
Awarded the role of media relations director for this new “BayernBlizzard” project, I was assigned with the important task of creating awareness of this new partnership within the soccer and sports media community in Ontario. In collaboration with the FC Bayern public relations team in Germany and in the US, a joint media release was issued on May 19, which included a video featuring Canada’s own superstar Alphonso Davies and some of his FC Bayern teammates. Within a matter of hours, I had already begun to arrange media interviews with Toronto Blizzard Technical Director Joe Parolini, who is the principle spokesperson for the partnership.
Since that date, the news of this exciting new program has appeared on a number of soccer-specific and general sports media, including the Footy Prime Podcast, one of the top-rated soccer shows in Canada, CityNews 680, Vibe 105, Soccer 360 Magazine, LPC Media and Torstar Metroland community weeklies. I have also been supplementing coverage in local and regional broadcast and digital media with regular updates across the Blizzard’s own social media platforms.
The next phase of the launch of this new program will be the lead-up to a series of one-week camps in July, which will feature members of the FC Bayern technical staff and will take place at venues across the Greater Toronto Area. Information on which German coaches will be attending these camps should be released in the coming days.
This has been a very rewarding experience for me as I have been able to execute a comprehensive media plan, which has produced results for the “BayernBlizzard” project, generating a significant amount of media coverage. I am very proud to have been selected to help lead the communications efforts for this project and I look forward to working closely with the FC Bayern PR team on many more future initiatives.
Here are just some of the links to the news coverage of the “BayernBlizzard” project: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/news-such-canmnt-crush-cura%C3%A7ao-bayern-munich-have-their/id1482039221?i=1000565998220
https://soccer360magazine.com/the-bayern-way/
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