The Danish League (Divisionsforeningen) held an SLO workshop at the Ceres Arena in Aarhus on 13 February 2016. The workshop was organised and planned by the Danish Leagues SLO coordinator, Kasper Kragh, in close cooperation with SD Europe. It was attended by 11 SLOs from eight of the 12 top-division clubs.
The workshop began with an introduction to the situation in Denmark by Kasper Kragh, who then outlined the direction the Danish Leagues intend to take the project. This was followed by a presentation aimed at developing the work at clubs reliant primarily on volunteer SLOs by SD Europe project coordinator Stuart Dykes. The presentation was broken up by regular interventions and questions from the floor and the discussion was good.
Fredrik Nilsson, lead SLO at Swedish champions IFK Norrköping then talked about his role as a volunteer SLO and, in particular, the problems he faced in establishing himself at his club. His presentation also went down well with the participants and sparked a useful discussion. He was backed up by Lena Wiberg-Gustafson, lead full-time SLO at Djurgårdens IF, who provided background on the SLO project in Sweden as a whole and explained how the Swedish SLO network operates.
In the afternoon the SLOs in attendance had a chance to talk about the difficulties they face in their day-to-day work and propose solutions to these problems. They were also asked to tell the Danish League what it can do for them to make things easier. Once again, the discussion was very lively and productive.
The workshop concluded with two elections. In the first the SLOs in attendance chose Christian Golding Andersen (Aalborg BK) and Jonas Kolind-Andersen (FC Nordsjælland) as the spokespersons to represent the Danish SLO network. The aim of the network is to improve the communications between individual SLOs and provide a collective voice in their dealings with the governing bodies, in particular the league. It will also provide a channel for the Danish League to communicate with the network and jointly develop ideas for the work in the medium term.
Finally, the Danish SLOs elected Lasse Bauer (Brøndby IF) to represent them in a new European SLO network to be set up soon.
Kasper Kragh said: “We had a very good seminar with exciting presentations from experienced people in the SLO world. This was a good opening to our afternoon debate where all the SLOs participated with their different views and knowledge. This gave us a good platform to continue the work with the SLO project in Denmark“.
Under Article 35 of the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations, clubs across Europe are required to appoint a Supporter Liaison Officer (SLO) to ensure proper and constructive discourse between them and their fans. The SLO project originated in 2009 as a result of detailed talks between UEFA and SD Europe. It was approved by the UEFA Executive Committee in 2010, with SD Europe appointed to manage its implementation across UEFA’s 54 member associations. If you would like to learn more, visit the SLO section on the SD Europe website, follow the official SLO account on twitter or get directly in touch via slo@supporters-direct.coop.
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