Love of the Game

Love of the Game began as a campaign in 2021 and became a Charity in England and Wales in March 2023 (No. 1202462).  It seeks to reduce concussion-related issues arising from contact and non-contact sports. Love of the Game takes a solutions-based approach to the problem by working with athletes, technologists, academics and the business and financial communities to develop new technologies that will prevent, diagnose and treat head injuries in sport. 

We are an impassioned community of athletes, players, fans, innovators and experts, united by our love of sport and the desire to, not only protect players of all ages from the potentially devastating impact of head injuries, but also to protect the integrity of the sports we know and love. Love of the Game aims to preserve our sports by reducing the risk of early onset dementia to players, lengthening sporting careers and reducing the fear of taking part.

Our mission statement is:

To protect players of all ages from the potentially devastating impact of head injuries, while also protecting the integrity of the sports we know and love.

Like most sports, success is the product of a whole team. Solving this crisis is no different. We have brought together a unique network of over 600 supporters representing the UK’s major sports, government, academia, technology, science and business.  We are forging new and productive relationships with major and grass-roots sporting clubs, research institutes, charitable organisations and major governing sports bodies. 

Love of the Game (LOTG) itself represents a meeting of the worlds of sport and business/campaigning through its founders.  Its key figure is former England and British and Irish Lions rugby union international Simon Shaw MBE.  Simon, who played elite rugby for 23 years, now suffers from frequent memory loss, an issue he believes is caused by the severe knocks to the head he faced as a player.  

Solutions-based approach

Rather than focusing on the challenges of the past, LOTG’s aim is to protect the players of the future and ensure that future athletes are protected from long term health risks that yesterday’s and today’s players have had to accept. In order to achieve this, LOTG promotes actions across a series of pillars:

Education

• Improving recognition of the symptoms of concussion
• Positioning the long-term protection of the head and brain as part of a player’s training regimen and routine

Diagnosis

• Promoting more coherent sharing of information to aid in the identification of diagnosis tools
• Developing a more sophisticated method of identifying the signs of concussion at the point of impact and for markers over the course of a player’s career
• Creating impact assessment wearables and big data analysis to grade risk and severity of concussion and the proper course of action needed

Treatment & prevention

• Promoting multi-disciplinary collaboration (bringing together investors, inventors, researchers and sports experts) to accelerate product development, experimentation and implementation.

Concussion Prevention

In April 2024, LOTG held our second annual UK Concussion Prevention Network conference, in London, in partnership with the University of Bath and Calgary University. This marked the creation of a new UK Concussion Prevention Network. A Steering Group and an Advisory Group have been set up to deliver the aims of the network and provide governance and communication with key stakeholder organisations.

Creating a national network of dedicated sports concussion care

In 2022 LOTG began to draw together a network of leading neurosurgeons, neurologists and radiographers from around 20 leading hospitals.  Now called the UK Concussion Network (UKCN) it is co-chaired by Professor Peter Hutchinson from Cambridge and Professor Michael Parker from LOTG.     The network has been invaluable in, inter alia, providing advice to government in helping to craft the national guidelines for concussion management across all amateur sports.  These guidelines were published in late 2023 by DCMS.   

Creating an integrated national approach to concussion in sport

LOTG has worked closely with Government to define an integrated approach to Concussion in Sports, linking multiple government departments, the RSCCs, research and technology committees and work on Prevention and Concussion Management guidelines.

During 2025 LOTG is focussing more on education, including by providing digital tools to enable faster and more reliable pitchside diagnosis and recommendations for treatment.   We also aim to continue to showcase emerging technologies and demonstrate them to interested audiences through our Demo Days.  The last of these was in October 2024, showcasing ‘BrainEye’, ‘Concussion Toolkit’  and ‘Abbott’.  We intend to hold our next Demo Day in October 2025.   

We continue to work with WAVi, whose portable brain scanner has recently received FDA approval in the USA and the final year of research and publication is underway.     WAVi was part of one of our first Demo Days in 2022 as was another product, PolarCap, which is now being used by professional teams in ice Hockey, football, rugby Union and rugby League in multiple countries.  

We are exploring a working relationship with Concussion Toolkit which would help us deliver the education element of our mission.  We believe there is a real gap in the ‘market’ for LOTG to develop education programmes which can be used by grass roots sport, schools and universities.  

Love of the Game began as a campaign in 2021 and became a Charity in England and Wales in March 2023 (No. 1202462). It seeks to reduce concussion-related issues arising from contact and non-contact sports. Love of the Game takes a solutions-based approach to the problem by working with athletes, technologists, academics and the business and financial communities to develop new technologies that will prevent, diagnose and treat head injuries in sport.

We are an impassioned community of athletes, players, fans, innovators and experts, united by our love of sport and the desire to, not only protect players of all ages from the potentially devastating impact of head injuries, but also to protect the integrity of the sports we know and love. Love of the Game aims to preserve our sports by reducing the risk of early onset dementia to players, lengthening sporting careers and reducing the fear of taking part.

Our mission statement is:

To protect players of all ages from the potentially devastating impact of head injuries, while also protecting the integrity of the sports we know and love.

Like most sports, success is the product of a whole team. Solving this crisis is no different. We have brought together a unique network of over 600 supporters representing the UK’s major sports, government, academia, technology, science and business. We are forging new and productive relationships with major and grass-roots sporting clubs, research institutes, charitable organisations and major governing sports bodies.

Solutions-based approach

Rather than focusing on the challenges of the past, LOTG’s aim is to protect the players of the future and ensure that future athletes are protected from long term health risks that yesterday’s and today’s players have had to accept. In order to achieve this, LOTG promotes actions across a series of pillars:

Education

• Improving recognition of the symptoms of concussion
• Positioning the long-term protection of the head and brain as part of a player’s training regimen and routine

Diagnosis

• Promoting more coherent sharing of information to aid in the identification of diagnosis tools
• Developing a more sophisticated method of identifying the signs of concussion at the point of impact and for markers over the course of a player’s career
• Creating impact assessment wearables and big data analysis to grade risk and severity of concussion and the proper course of action needed

Treatment & prevention

• Promoting multi-disciplinary collaboration (bringing together investors, inventors, researchers and sports experts) to accelerate product development, experimentation and implementation.

Concussion Prevention

In April 2024, LOTG held and funded our second annual UK Concussion Prevention Network conference, in London, in partnership with the University of Bath and Calgary University. This marked the creation of a new UK Concussion Prevention Network. A Steering Group and an Advisory Group have been set up to deliver the aims of the network and provide governance and communication with key stakeholder organisations.

Creating a national network of dedicated sports concussion care

In 2022 LOTG began to draw together a network of leading neurosurgeons, neurologists and radiographers from around 20 leading hospitals. Now called the UK Concussion Network (UKCN) it is co-chaired by Professor Peter Hutchinson from Cambridge and Professor Michael Parker from LOTG.     LOTG is financially supporting the administration of the network. The network has been invaluable in, inter alia, providing advice to government in helping to craft the national guidelines for concussion management across all amateur sports. These guidelines were published in 2023 by DCMS.

Creating an integrated national approach to concussion in sport

LOTG has worked closely with Government to define an integrated approach to Concussion in Sports, linking multiple government departments, the RSCCs, research and technology committees and work on Prevention and Concussion Management guidelines. 

The Future

Looking ahead in 2025 LOTG aims to focus on education, including by providing digital tools to enable faster and more reliable pitch side diagnosis and recommendations for treatment.   We also aim to continue to showcase emerging technologies and demonstrate them to interested audiences through our Demo Days. The most recent of these was in October 2024 showcasing ‘BrainEye’, ‘Concussion Toolkit’ and ‘Abbott’. This was our second fundraising event at Holland and Holland and it was again generously sponsored by Unispace (who have committed to continue support into 2025).   It was targeted at a selected audience to help fund support for the tech companies who exhibited.   We intend to hold our next Demo Day later in 2025.  

We have also developed a relationship with Howden Insurance who are supporting us financially.

We continue to work with WAVi, whose portable brain scanner has recently received FDA approval in the USA and the final year of research and publication is underway.     WAVi was involved in one of our first Demo Days in 2022 as was another product, PolarCap, which is now being used by professional teams in ice hockey, football, rugby Union and rugby League in multiple countries.