From Pills to Pitch: Why Football Tickets Could Be the NHS’s Boldest Therapy Yet
A story that made me smile
You don’t often hear football mentioned in the same breath as therapy. But in Gloucestershire, GPs are trialling a scheme where people experiencing depression are given free tickets to football matches as part of their treatment. Yes, you read that right - seasonal affected disorder meets season tickets.
This isn’t a gimmick. It’s called social prescribing, and it’s slowly weaving its way into mainstream NHS care. Instead of relying only on medication, doctors prescribe community - whether that’s gardening groups, choir rehearsals or in this case, the roar of the terraces.
Read more about therapy beyond the room
Why football?
Dr Simon Opher, an MP and former GP, has been championing the idea. His thinking is simple: being part of a crowd, sharing a collective focus, singing or shouting with strangers and it all adds up to something bigger than symptom relief.
It’s belonging.
And the early results are striking: reports suggest that up to 80% of participants keep going to matches or similar social events long after the pilot ends. Not because they’ve been told to, but because something inside them rekindled. That continuity is what we rarely see with pills alone.
Antidepressants in context
The UK issued over 91 million antidepressant prescriptions in 2024. That’s not inherently bad, as medication saves lives. But numbers this high, also signal something systemic: loneliness, disconnection and overstretched services, as well as missed work hours and responsibilities. Pills may lift symptoms, but they don’t necessarily rebuild the networks we all need to thrive.
When therapy clients tell me they feel “flat,” I often ask: Where are your sparks? Where are your people? Medication can soften the edges, but sparks come from life lived. Social prescribing aims to light those sparks deliberately.
How this fits with therapy
If you’re a therapist or coach, you might wonder - what’s this got to do with me? Everything. Because it reframes our work. We’re not just treating minds in isolation; we’re tending ecosystems.
Imagine asking in session:
What happens in your body when you’re cheering among strangers?
Can you carry that feeling into your week?
What might it mean to compost your loneliness into something that feeds new growth, like joining a group?
That’s therapy meeting life. Football tickets may be the catalyst, but the reflection happens in the room with us.
Beyond football and why it works
Not everyone likes sport, of course. Some will find connection through art, music, nature, or volunteering. The principle is transferable and shared experiences reduce isolation and build resilience. Research backs this up and social connection is a protective factor against depression, anxiety, even relapse in addiction recovery.
When people feel part of something, stress hormones reduce, immune function improves, and perspective widens. In short: belonging is medicine.
A gentle challenge to the profession
For years, therapy has leaned heavily on the one-to-one, fifty-minute to one hour session. Valuable, yes. But social prescribing nudges us to ask: how else can we help clients weave community into their healing?
It might look like encouraging them to try a group hobby, or exploring barriers to joining. It might mean reframing connection not as “optional extras,” but as essential nervous system care.
Therapists are gardeners, not mechanics. We don’t just fix broken parts, we tend the soil. Social prescribing is like adding compost to tired ground, helping us to all grow together.
The cultural angle
There’s also something powerful about football in particular. In the UK, it carries identity, ritual, community, even intergenerational bonds. For some, it’s a rare space where emotion is permitted; joy, grief, frustration and celebration. To prescribe that is to tap into culture itself.
Could we see similar pilots with theatre tickets, music festivals or nature retreats? I hope so. Because when health systems embrace culture, they stop seeing humans as problems to medicate, and start seeing us as beings who thrive through shared meaning. A friend of mine lives in Austria and she receives two 3 week long retreat visits during her lifetime, where she has access to peace, shared meal times with those she doesn’t know, free doctor consultations, health check ups and more. Multiply that by the visits everyone else makes and you have a shared and collective calming of the nervous system.
Potential pitfalls
Let’s not romanticise. Accessibility is a challenge: travel costs, physical ability, or simply not liking football could exclude some. Data privacy and funding streams need thought. And importantly, social prescribing mustn’t become an excuse to cut therapy provision. It’s an addition, not a substitution.
Still, the Gloucestershire trial points to a hopeful direction: care that’s relational, embodied, and sustainable.
Why this matters now
Antidepressant use is soaring. Pills help, but they don’t rebuild connection.
Isolation is an epidemic. Social prescribing directly targets loneliness, one of the biggest health risks of our time.
Therapists can integrate this. By linking clients’ lived experiences back to session work, where we can deepen insight and resilience.
Book a session today www.stepping-out.life if you’d like to explore connection-centred therapy in practice.
Related BBC article - 'Prescription for time at the coast helped me'
