ENHANCING STUDENT SPORTS AND BUILDING INFLUENCE
AND IMPACT
British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) is the national governing body for higher education sport in the UK. Chris Lightfoot has been a director of BUCS for over three years. Initially co-opted to the board to support the building of the brand, marketing, communications and commercial functions, the role developed into being part of the team that saw the merger of the British University Sports Association (BUSA) and the University & College Sports (UCS) in 2008.
As part of the team, Whitestone developed the new BUCS identity and established a vibrant look and feel that has been applied to everything from websites to competition brands and broadcasting.
As part of the organisation’s development we also created the initial commercial structures based around access to a notoriously difficult audience to engage; the new approach has increased the number of partners from three to 11 and includes the likes of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Barclays, Nike and Lucozade.
Increasing the sporting programme was another key aim of BUCS’s development and working with them to build the BUCS Championships’ brand established it as the UK’s largest annual multi-sport event and focus of the student sporting calendar. It is now shown on SKY Sports, which is a major boost to the reach and value of the event to BUCS and students as a whole.