The £1.6million deducted from the Football Association by funding body Sport England earlier this year will be spent on a pilot project in Nottingham aimed at getting more people playing football regularly.
The FA had the funding cut imposed in March after failing to reverse a decline in participation - last year there were 1.84million people playing football regularly, a fall of 100,000 since April 2013.
Sport England has now reallocated the money and Nottingham has been named as Sport England's 'City of Football', beating Manchester and Portsmouth. The money will especially be targeted at boosting the number of girls, women and players from the city's Pakistani community.
A statement from Sport England said Nottingham clinched their bid "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 key element is a digital platform - 'Playbook' - which will help people planning football activities in Nottingham be able to target a sector of the population with relevant offers.
Sport England's director of sport, Phil Smith, told Press Association Sport: "When we took the money from the FA in March we had to think what to do with it. The FA has been with us on this and I think it has opened their eyes to different ways of doing things.
"This pilot project is also about changing attitudes towards football - some people have a negative attitude to it, others want to play but the game is not quite catering for them, maybe it's too competitive, and formal football structures are not catering for them."
Smith said Sport England had been impressed by the work Nottingham had one in increasing the proportion of officers from the black and minority communities on the local police force.
He added: "In the community of people of Pakistani origin for example there is a massive demand for football, however not many are playing in mainstream regular football so we want to take the game to them if we can."
Source: PA
