The four-year deal is the first long-term partnership between Facebook, which has 300 million users across the world, and the Government agency, which is hoping to leverage its influence to encourage people to get more involved with sport.
 

The focus of the promotion is a Sport Hub Facebook fan page, which will house exclusive applications that can be used by sports bodies to organise grassroots events.

The applications will allow Facebook users to challenge other people in their area and share the results with friends on the site.

Ben Bradshaw, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said: "Facebook has a unique ability to reach millions of people, young and increasingly not so young.

"Many of them won’t regard sport as part of their daily lives at the moment, but this pioneering and exciting partnership between the social marketing website, Sport England and sport’s governing bodies could change all that."
 

Facebook is providing an in-kind investment of £5 million a year until March 2013, which will cover the development of the Sport Hub, and will donate to charity the same amount any national governing body of sport or brand spends using Facebook ads to encourage people to play more sport.

Blake Chandlee, Facebook’s vice president of sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said: “Millions of people in the UK are already using Facebook to connect with their friends and organise events around things that matter to them, including sport.

"By cleverly leveraging Facebook’s tools and advertising programmes to get more people into sport, Sport England is using us as a tool for social change."