David Lloyd Leisure - Curating the DL Kids Football Experience.
A scalable football curriculum, coach training and merchandise ecosystem - built for consistent delivery across a growing multi-country club network.
Results
Delivered in 100+ clubs (across the UK and Europe)
30+ training workshops delivered
10,000+ medals sold through the award scheme
4,000+ footballs sold
Built curriculum for the DL Kids core age groups (from 18-months to 11-years)
Developed Football Fusion (8-15yrs) end-to-end (pilot camps delivered, now delivered internally in larger clubs)
The Brief
David Lloyd is Europes’ leading health, sport and leisure group, with a family experience at the heart of its proposition through DL Kids.
They wanted to elevate football into a best-in-class DL Kids experience - not just a s et of session plans - and needed a product that could be delivered consistently across a large and growing network.
The brief included:
Curriculum development for differing age bands
Training DL Kids coaches to deliver the programme consistently and brilliantly
Designing and producing merchandise/uniform to enhance the experience
Developing an award scheme to reward progress, participation and attendance
The Challenge
When you’re operating across 100+ clubs, the challenge isn’t creativity - it’s consistency at scale.
David Lloyd needed a specialist curriculum that:
Was age-appropriate and development-led
Could be delivered consistently by different teams, in different clubs
Matched DL Kids expectations for experience and service excellence
Was supported by a premium “look and feel” (kit, awards, coach uniform) that made the programme tangible for families
What We Did
Design
We created a structured football curriculum for core age groups
18-months - 3 years (parent and child)
3-5 years
6-10 years
Session plans were built around the four core principles of children’s development
Emotional
Social
Physical
Technical
To keep delivery engaging and memorable, sessions for younger ages were themed (e.g. Super Heroes, Out in Space, Down at the Farm).
Build
We built the “experience ecosystem” around the programme:
A 6-stage award scheme to reward skill development and attendance
Supporting physical assets including unique rubber medals, stickers and certificates
Merchandise packs designed and manufactured (kits, balls, bags)
Coach uniform created to ensure a consistent, high-quality look and feel across clubs
We also evolved the programme as the brand grew:
Following David Lloyd’s partnership with Flick (equipment partner), we developed specialist session plans integrating the equipment and embedded this training into the existing workshop model.
Deliver
We delivered the training workshops required to upskill DL Kids coaches:
Delivered 30+ workshops to support consistent rollout and ongoing quality
Training designed to be practical and repeatable - so coaches could deliver with confidence immediately
Why It Worked
Built for scale: curriculum + training + assets designed for consistent delivery across a large network
Experience, not just sessions: kit, awards and coach uniform made the programme tangible and premium
Commercially proven: medals, kit and football sales demonstrate real adoption, not just “delivered once”
Evolves with the operator: new equipment partnerships (e.g. Flick) integrated without breaking the delivery model
Operator-grade rollout: training that protects standards across clubs, coaches and geographies
