The Irish Men’s Hockey Team has launched a crowdfunding campaign under the banner ‘Obsessed’ to raise €225,000 to fund the final stages of their build up programme to competing at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio.
It is the first Irish team to qualify for the Olympics in more than 70 years and while there is substantial support from Hockey Ireland and Sport Ireland there is still a significant shortfall in reaching the €400,000 that the full programme will cost to put in place.
The preparations include three international matches in Cork this July against reigning World Champions The Netherlands.
The crowdfunding campaign is being run through Irish company Pledge Sports who are now running campaigns across 26 countries and have enabled similar approaches from individual athletes and teams over more than 30 different sports.
This campaign though is the most ambitious to date. As of this morning a total of €15,000 had already been pledged by 200 individual supporters ranging from players and coaches to clubs. A full listing of those who have contributed can be seen on the Pledge Sports site.
As is the way with these campaigns there are specific rewards for different levels of support ranging from thank you’s through to limited edition signed jerseys and prints.
Sponsorship of Match Series against the Netherlands, Korea and Canada are also available on the site at a cost of €6,000.
A range of branded merchandise is also being produced in support of the campaign and Atomic have created a campaign video which is getting great traction across the Hockey community.
“Pulling on the green jersey and representing your country in the Olympic Games is the ultimate ambition for any athlete,” said Captain David Harte.
“We are not however going to Rio to make up the numbers.”
“The journey travelled by this team in securing qualification has proven that we can compete with the world’s best. Our intention is to provide the Irish people with something to cheer about during the Olympics but to make that happen we need their support to allow us go to Rio as prepared as we must be and would ask people to donate what they can at: https://www.pledgesports.org/projects/obsessed/”
Reaching out to the Hockey community and making it easy to donate to help something which will be of huge benefit to the sport makes sense.
In true fundraising style it is always easiest to set a target once you know the potential base of donors. If each of the 168 clubs and 280 schools were to share the load equally it would mean an average fundraising ‘ask’ of €500. That’s not such a mountain to climb for something so memorable and which can create a long term legacy for the sport.
