Sport England has secured a long-term partnership with the social networking website, Facebook, as part of efforts to increase sports participation leading up to the London 2012 Olympics.

It is hoped that the £20m venture will provide national governing bodies for sport (NGBs) with a new method of reaching out to people before the 2012 Games, with more than 20 million people currently using Facebook in the UK. A new 'Sport Hub' will be established on the social networking website as part of the partnership, which will feature a number of applications - sponsors; fans; groups; events calendar; photos and videos and competition - to allow NGBs to market and organise grassroots sporting events.

The competition element will give Facebook users the opportunity to challenge other people in their local area to a match or race and then to share the results with friends and networks, while local events will also be posted to the website. Facebook will provide in-kind investment worth £5m each year until March 2013 to help develop the 'Sport Hub', as well as providing matched advertising spend for brands and NGBs to use adverts to encourage participation.

The scheme is being piloted through British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) and six sports during this year's universities' freshers week, and hopes to reach 12,000 students in a four-month period. Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw said: "Facebook has a unique ability to reach millions of people, young and increasingly not so young. Many of them will not regard sport as part of their daily lives at the moment, but this pioneering and exciting new partnership between the website, Sport England and sports' governing bodies could change all that."

Sport England chair Richard Lewis added: "This partnership with Facebook will fundamentally change the way sports engage with participants, helping them to reach out beyond existing club structures to the young people who are the future of sport." Image: A table tennis launch event organised by Sport England through Facebook