What was claimed
The NHS is considering making attending a Premier League match an official treatment option to help tackle depression.
Our verdict
The NHS says this isn’t true. There was a local pilot in Gloucestershire for lower-league football, but not for Premier League tickets.
We’ve spotted several social media posts claiming that the NHS is considering offering Premier League match tickets as a treatment for depression.
But this is not correct. NHS England has described the claim as “not true”, explaining that although there was a small local pilot in Gloucestershire for lower-league football, this was not for Premier League tickets.
The claim has been shared across X, Facebook and Instagram and ‘liked’ thousands of times in recent days. Some versions suggest the story comes from Sky Sports News, but we couldn’t find any articles about this on Sky’s website, and a spokesperson told fact checkers at Reuters that Sky Sports News had not reported that the NHS was planning to make Premier League football a treatment for depression.
The local pilot in Gloucestershire was announced in July 2025. It saw Forest Green Rovers, which competes in the National League, the fifth level of the English football league system, team up with a dozen doctors' surgeries across Stroud to make "football part of the treatment plan for mental health".
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We could find no evidence for any NHS initiatives treating depression with Premier League football.
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This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the NHS confirmed this isn’t true. There was a local pilot in Gloucestershire for lower-league football, but not for Premier League tickets.
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