Nottingham beat off competition from Manchester and Portsmouth yesterday to win the right to stage a £1.6 million two-year pilot project that will test ways of getting more people playing football regularly.

The Football Association had £1.6m of public funding for the amateur game cut by Sport England in March after failing to reverse a decline in participation. Last year there 1.84 million people played football regularly, a fall of 100,000 since April 2013.

In a new funding initiative, Nottingham has been named as Sport England’s City of Football, after beating 21 other cities due to their commitment to promoting the sport at grassroots level.

Sport England said Nottingham won “by mobilising an impressive group of private, public and voluntary sector partners from both inside and outside the traditional football family, to do whatever it takes to get more people — particularly those aged 14-25 years — playing all kinds of football regularly.”

One element is a digital platform called “Playbook”  which will help people planning football activities in Nottingham  target people with relevant offers.

One Nottingham director Nigel Cooke said: “Over the next two years we will create new football partnerships, develop new technologies, encourage more people to play, especially 14 to 25-year-olds, women and girls, people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and share our learning so that the rest of England can benefit from our insight.”

Sport England’s director of sport Phil Smith said: “This pilot project is also about changing attitudes towards football.”