Decathlon, on their mission to make sport more accessible for all, have launched a new service called Play.

‍

Play enables Decathlon users to find and book activities, as well as to explore information, articles and products to help them to be more active. Play will combine Decathlon's own activities (often hosted from within their stores around the UK), and then using the imin platform to show activities from sports venues and clubs from across the UK. The service has initially launched with Fusion Lifestyle, and already has well over 800 articles and 5,000 activities every week.

‍

Head of Partnerships at Decathlon UK, comments: “In order to make the PLAY project a success, we are rethinking and reinventing new ways to connect with the external world - beyond our stores. This new sports experience platform is our innovative approach to create more value and opportunity to generate more touch points with more sports people. It’s simply impossible to solve this problem alone; therefore we must open up our eco-system, to partner with local fitness providers and find the best solution to ensure physical activity is more and more accessible for all.”

‍

This is a significant milestone for both imin and the OpenActive initiative, as Decathlon become the first major private sector brand to realise the potential of using open data in this way.

‍

Dean Armoogum, Fusion Lifestyle’s Head of Marketing, Digital & CRM, says: " Through our collaboration with imin, we’ve been able to work with a number of public sector organisations in the attempt to reach new audiences - but now, with Decathlon as the first major private sector brand to come aboard, we’re really excited about the potential this holds to get more people more active, and a sign of things to come as OpenActive continues to gain momentum.”

‍

If you are interested in hearing more about how open data and imin can help your brand to tap into the power of sports participation, do please get in touch.

‍