Reach supporting Cure Leukaemia’s £10 million virtual stadium campaign to help children fight blood cancer

National Blood Cancer charity Cure Leukaemia is asking the football community to come together and finish blood cancer at the start of childhood cancer awareness month.

And Reach PLC is supporting it.

The “FINISH-IT!” campaign seeks to raise £10 million for a new National Children’s Blood Cancer Trials Network - a UK-wide paediatric clinical trials programme that will deliver new innovative treatments to improve outcomes for children with blood cancer.

Here at Reach we are committed to raising awareness.

Fans across the world are being encouraged to buy a £14 virtual seat in a 250,000-capacity virtual stadium.

Every 14 minutes, someone in the UK is diagnosed with a form of blood cancer with 250,000 people currently living with blood cancer across the country.

Blood cancer is the third-biggest cancer killer in the UK and has affected the football community, including Stiliyan Petrov, Sol Bamba, David Brooks, Carl Ikeme, Geoff Thomas MBE, Rebekah Stott, Joe Thompson and Gary Lineker’s son, George.

To help support the launch, the Linekers recently visited Great Ormond Street Hospital where George was treated as a baby following his diagnosis at only six weeks old.

“We feel incredibly grateful, incredibly fortunate because George made it,” says Gary Lineker.

“When there have been cases, Petrov or Ikeme, every time there’s an overwhelming desire to help from people and this whole campaign is a really good idea to get football to actually be proactive and try to help support in various different ways.

“We feel indebted to charities that raise money to get research that enabled George to have the life he has had because without that amount of research and people putting money in that research he wouldn’t be in that position