Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) news

 In 2020, the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) elaborated a strategy for the RBFA knowledge centre.

Based on four pillars, the national association and its regions want to create and share knowledge on all domains of football in a scientific way. The four pillars are research, education, player support and knowledge sharing.

Last September, the RBFA launched a first study on its channels. It was carried out in cooperation with the knowledge centre coordinator, Matteo Balliauw, and focused on the ideal career paths for young football talents. The launch of this study and the accompanying video were the starting point of the applied knowledge centre strategy.

Since then, many more studies have been shared on the RBFA corporate channels, each time including a call to action for researchers and thesis students to work with the RBFA knowledge centre.

The range of topics is very diverse: from discrimination within sport, fan engagement, the retraining of football players, econometrics, sports business, management and marketing to sports data and artificial intelligence.

The research centre also engages in UEFA research initiatives, such as the UEFA Grow SROI Model (social return on investment) study for Belgium and its regions, which will soon be published, and the UEFA Research Grant Programme, for which academics within the RBFA network are encouraged to submit proposals.

As well as sharing scientific studies, the knowledge centre also publishes a monthly (data) infographic called ‘Did you know?’, showing key data and insights from the previous period. In this way, the RBFA aims to realise its objective to be transparent about the professional activities that take place within the organisation. For more information or to collaborate with the knowledge centre, contact knowledge.centre@rbfa.be.

This article originally appeared in UEFA Direct 194