Real Betis, Prepared for the Most Inclusive Match in the World

Real Betis, Prepared for the Most Inclusive Match in the World

Real Betis Balompié will hold the most inclusive match in the world next Saturday, February 18, at the Benito Villamarín Stadium, an initiative that aims to bring together fans from all over the world with functional diversity to make visible and claim that all people can enjoy a football game equally.

To launch this event, the Verdiblanco club has teamed up with Integrated Dreams, an NGO based in Lisbon whose mission is to increase the representation of people with disabilities in the world of sport through inclusion, development, and education. In addition, since the beginning of the organization of this historic event, Real Betis and Integrated Dreams have had the encouragement and support of the World Football Summit, the setting where the most inclusive match in the world was announced.

In this match, the jersey of the Real Betis players when they step onto the pitch will have the number written in Braille. Prior to this, the bibs used during the warm-up will be screen-printed with the ColorADD code, which represents with symbols the different shades of color to be able to be identified by color-blind people. In addition, the players will be accompanied by children with functional diversity, an action that Real Betis carries out every year in the Disability match. 

Also during the break, players from the Flamencos Amputados Sur CF football team, an Andalusian team made up of amputees, will participate in the activity that will take place on the pitch with Reale. During the preview, different adapted sports exhibitions will be held for fans to participate in before the game. Another special moment of the game will be the moment of the anthem, which will also be interpreted in sign language from different points on the pitch. 

But this match also wants to break records, hosting the largest number of people with functional diversity in the stands of the Stadium, a fact that could become a world milestone in terms of the inclusion of people with disabilities in sports. The current record for an official match was broken in 2018 in the Polish League, in a match played at the Śląsk Wrocław stadium, which was attended by 1,074 people with disabilities, a record that Betis hopes to surpass by far.

Real Betis will take advantage of this event to release a match guide in pictograms and another in easy reading, which will be available on the Club’s website, and made as a cognitive accessibility tool. 

To improve the experience and accessibility in the Verdiblanco stadium on match days, Real Betis will take advantage of the occasion to carry out questionnaires to fans with functional diversity who attend the match.