Kindred Launches Initiative to Promote Heart Health in Pro Cycling

Kindred’s flagship Unibet brand has unveiled a new campaign to raise awareness about heart health issues within the cycling community. Called Follow Your Heart, the new campaign represents a partnership between the operator and the Dutch cycling team Tour de Tietema (TDT).

As a part of the initiative, Unibet joined forces with the team to develop an online learning tool in response to the growing concern over heart health issues within the cycling community.

Furthermore, a free and interactive augmented reality experience will feature digital versions of TDT’s owners, Bas Tietema, Devin van der Wiel and Josse Wes who will guide users through an eight-step process to perform resuscitation.

The campaign’s goal is not only to increase awareness of the health problems faced by cyclists but to also increase survival rates by teaching sports fans in the Netherlands and Belgium how to save lives.

The initiative will be promoted by TDT members who will wear a custom exclusive jersey featuring campaign imagery. The TDT-Unibet team already wore the jersey featuring the campaign name on the chest, hearts on the sleeve and eight lifesaving skills on the back during the Tour of Antalya.

Kindred Wants to Teach Fans How to Save Lives

Lennart Kessels, Kinded Group’s general manager for the Netherlands, commented on the initiative, saying that sports are in Unibet’s DNA, which is why Follow Your Heart is a natural fit for the company. Kessels hopes that the campaign will inspire Dutch cycling fans to learn valuable lifesaving skills.

This awareness campaign fits well with our focus on increasing social engagement, and we hope that, together with Tour de Tietema, we can inspire as many Dutch people as possible to complete the AR experience.

Lennart Kessels, GM Netherlands, Kindred Group

Kindred Group’s general manager for Belgium, Dennis Marien, also shared his thoughts, pointing out that this is not the first time Kindred has raised awareness for the eight life-saving skills. Previously, the operator promoted this invaluable skillset together with Club Bruges.

By tailoring this now to cycling, we hope to educate even more Belgians about the importance of these life-saving techniques. As playing responsibly is one of our key focuses, the link to acting responsibly in sports is evident.

Dennis Marien, GM Belgium, Kindred Group

Finally, Bas Tietema, one of the owners of Tour de Tietema, shared his thoughts, providing insight into his motivations behind the campaign. He described himself as a person who always follows his heart but also one who couldn’t help but notice that a less well-functioning heart can make people very insecure. Considering the proliferation of stories about health problems within the cycling world, the need for health awareness became evident to Tietema.

We, within the team, didn’t know how to perform lifesaving actions. With our cycling team, we reach a lot of people, so we wanted to use that reach to draw attention to this current issue.

Bas Tietema, co-owner, Tour de Tietema

In other news, Kindred recently published an update on its Journey towards Zero initiative.