The United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland has put together an ambitious five-nation bid to host the event, which - if successful - could be the largest sporting event to be hosted in the UK since the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The UK and Ireland is now the sole bidder for the tournament, with Turkey withdrawing to pair up with Italy to host 2032. It looks increasingly likely that our five-nation bid will win.

If we are successful - what are the opportunities to use UEFA Euro 2028 to bring a long-term impact to our islands? How can we learn from the successes and failings of previous major events?

Firstly, we must acknowledge that hosting major events is expensive, therefore placing public money behind staging the UEFA Euro would be reckless without robust planning and implementation to ensure the potential social and economic benefits are realised over the long term.

In the design of the bid, there are many opportunities to leverage the event to meet social and economic goals. These include:

• The venue footprint of UEFA Euro 2028 would be extended over 10 cities in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There is a resultant opportunity to spread impact across the isles, establishing shared long-term goals and some tailored to each region.

• The bid is backed by 10 principle partners: the five National Governments and five National Football Associations. These bodies can come together to achieve results greater than the sum of their parts.

• The bid vision of "Football for all, Football for good. Football for the future" promises to look at diversity, sustainability and inclusion as core underpinning aspects of the event.  This strapline can evolve into more than just a bid slogan.

• Football has a huge engagement power, beyond any other sport, which can be used as a platform for social impact, empowerment and change.

The UK in particular is becoming increasingly established at using the opportunities of major sporting events to catalyse and accelerate positive change- for example Rugby League World Cup 2021 and UEFA Women’s Euro 2022.

These events shared a characteristic of having focused, achievable legacy goals - and setting a timeline by which to achieve them. Rather than making broad promises about sports participation or athlete inspiration, these events set defined targets such as mental wellbeing amongst male rugby league players or reducing inactivity amongst specific demographics.

A five-nation UEFA Euro in the UK and Ireland provides a fantastic opportunity to look at long-term impact in a fresh and innovative way, with a methodology that incorporates a wide range of stakeholders, geographies, cultures and generations.

Planned and implemented correctly, it can also do this at a scale not seen since the nascent impact and legacy approaches of London 2012.

In driving social impact, football has the potential to excel. Thanks to various social return on investment projects across all five host nations, we know that participating can bring multiple individual and community impacts, and that some outcomes, such as personal happiness, are up to three times greater amongst these from lower socio-economic groups.

We also know that football can be used as an engagement tool to help deliver other social outcomes, with schemes such as the Youth Justice Sports Fund from the Department of Justice recently set up to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour in areas of deprivation.

In the sport for development sector, there is a ready-made network of clubs, charities, community groups and professional club community organisations who can deliver competently and at scale.

A UEFA Euro would bring an opportunity to widen engagement across non-traditional networks too, following in the footsteps of UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 that engaged a range of organisations across the arts, heritage and even social housing sectors.

The ambition to create social as well as economic impact is backed up in recent government strategy, including the UK government’s Gold Framework for bidding and staging major events and UK Sport’s 2021-2031 strategic objective to Inspire Positive Change. 

Earlier this year, Spirit of 2012 published its Power of Events Inquiry looking at how events can best maximise long-term impact and achieve greater returns on investment for the communities that host them.  

The inquiry gathered evidence from multiple major sporting and cultural events hosted in the UK since London 2012.

Its recommendations provide five key learnings for the prospective UEFA Euro 2028 to follow, if the bid is successful:

1 Long-term impact and a clear plan for "what next" must be the driver for the decision to bid or host a major event. UEFA Euro 2028 opportunity: The tournament can be used as a catalyst to start or accelerate existing, long-term strategic objectives of the various stakeholders such as national governments, national FAs, host cities and local authorities.

2 The long-term impact of events must be underpinned by demarcated funding, accountability and governance. The responsibility to leave a lasting impact should not be left solely to the organising body; all stakeholders have a part to play in being involved and accountable.

3 Greater attention must be paid to who benefits from events and who is left out. UEFA Euro 2028’s engagement potential could be a powerful tool to reach people who may not typically engage with other major events.

4 More events should be designed and curated with a broad range of stakeholders to build common ground across divides. There is an opportunity to embed best practice in long-term impact planning from the outset of the event lifecycle, involving a wide range of diverse stakeholders.

5 Events that use volunteers should have a clear strategy to boost longer-term community volunteering. There is some evidence that community volunteering is being negatively impacted by the cost of living crisis, but amongst sports events the volunteering demand remains strong. Could a marquee event like UEFA EURO 2028 be used to help re-energise community volunteering?

We eagerly await the UEFA Euro 2028 host nation announcement in Nyon on Tuesday to see if the UK and Ireland will get their opportunity to build on the successes and learnings from a decade since London 2012.