The initiative also reflects a broader change taking place at Villa. In discussion with Global Sustainable Sport, Guy Rippon, Social Impact and Community Director at Aston Villa, explained how the club is bringing together its environmental, social and governance activities into a more integrated long-term strategy.

A shirt with a different message

With the Foundation featured prominently on Villa’s shirts for the Europa League final, the club created a limited edition of 1,000 replicas. They sold out within hours, with £10 from each sale donated to the Foundation, while a signed squad shirt generated additional funds.

But Villa deliberately looked beyond Birmingham. Ten per cent of the proceeds went to final opponents SC Freiburg and another ten per cent to final hosts Beşiktaş JK, supporting community programmes in Germany and Turkey.

For Rippon, the symbolism was important.

“With it being such an historic occasion and having the Foundation featured on the shirts, we wanted to recognise the impact that football can have on people and in communities all over Europe.”

He added that the club was particularly pleased that the money would help people access “sporting and educational opportunities they may not otherwise have had”.

Impact across borders

Beşiktaş is directing its contribution towards its ‘Spread Your Wings for Goodness’ project, which provides books, tablets, stationery and educational materials to children in rural schools across Turkey. Freiburg, meanwhile, is using the funding for its ‘Moving More Together’ programme, developing inclusive football opportunities for children and young people with and without disabilities.

Arne Stratmann, Head of Sustainability and Fan Affairs at SC Freiburg, described the initiative as a gesture that “reaches across national borders”, and added: “It demonstrates the power of European football and the positive impact that clubs can have on society through their commitment.”

That is perhaps the wider significance of the initiative. Instead of treating a European final purely as a sporting and commercial opportunity, Villa used its platform to connect three clubs and three communities around social impact.

The work behind the badge

The initiative sits within a much larger community programme. The Aston Villa Foundation is the club’s official charitable arm and focuses particularly on children, young people and young adults experiencing significant social inequalities in inner-city Birmingham.

During 2024/25, more than 30,000 people participated across over 40 Foundation projects and programmes, including more than 24,000 children and young people. Its work spans sport and physical activity, education, employment, health and wellbeing and community engagement.

Figures provided by Villa put the reach even higher, at 31,658 participants across 17,483 sessions, activities and events. Recent independent Premier League social-value calculations undertaken by Substance valued the Foundation’s contribution at £65.2 million, representing £21.68 of social return for every £1 invested.

Crucially, the Foundation is also strengthening how that impact is measured. Its Knowledge Transfer Partnership is embedding evaluation frameworks across programmes and developing an impact dashboard combining quantitative evidence with qualitative impact storytelling.

Connecting the dots

The conversation with Global Sustainable Sport highlighted an equally important development behind the scenes: Villa is moving towards a more integrated approach to ESG.

As he explained, the challenge is increasingly about joining together activity that already exists across the organisation:

“My job is trying to connect the dots and trying to make sure that we are both strategising internally across all of these different subjects and also reporting on them.”

Villa is developing environmental and philanthropy strategies alongside existing Foundation, EDI and staff wellbeing programmes, with the intention of creating an overarching ESG framework feeding into the wider club strategy. The club is also preparing its first ESG-related report.

Rippon acknowledges that this is different from delivering individual community projects.

“I’m used to working and delivering quick wins. A project comes in, a grant comes in, an opportunity comes in, we get it, we mobilise, we make it happen. This is taking a little bit longer, but it’s more of a strategic piece.”

From activity to impact

That transition matters. Aston Villa already has considerable community activity and an increasingly sophisticated evidence base behind it. The next stage is connecting those programmes with environmental sustainability, governance and the wider commercial and operational activities of the club.

The Europa League initiative provides a small but highly visible example of what that integration can look like: sporting success creating a communications platform, commercial activity generating funds, a Foundation providing community expertise and European rivals becoming social-impact partners.

The trophy belonged to Aston Villa. The impacts belonged to communities across Europe.