Acclaim and Birmingham City appear unlikely bedfellows given recent turmoil at St Andrew’s but the Championship club is being heralded for a pioneering ticket scheme designed to support grassroots football in the Midlands.

Faced with falling attendances since relegation from the Premier League in 2011, and encouraged by the Blues Collective supporters’ group, Birmingham have launched an initiative aimed at directly funding amateur football teams while increasing their own home crowds. Under the scheme, local football teams and leagues sell tickets at a discounted rate for home matches – £10 adults, £5 for 13-18 year-olds and £3 for under-13s – and receive 50% of the proceeds towards their own running costs.

The Save Grassroots Football campaign, which is calling for the Premier League to give 7.5% of its broadcasting income to the grassroots game, where participants are falling and pitch fees are rising, has described Birmingham’s step as an important breakthrough in the relationship between the professional and amateur games. Their hope is that others will follow the Championship club’s lead.

“We view it as a win-win for all sides,” said Wayne Cowen, head of ticketing and retail at Birmingham City. “We understand how important grassroots football is through the work we do in our academy and we want to be supportive of it. The added bonus for us is extra supporters in the stadium, many of them youngsters who will hopefully become future Birmingham City fans.”

As with all clubs coming to terms with life outside the Premier League, Birmingham’s attendances have suffered sharp decline since the club dropped into the Championship three years ago. Their last game at St Andrew’s as a top-flight concern, a 2-0 home defeat by Fulham in May 2011, attracted a crowd of 27,759 while Gary Rowett’s second home match as manager, Saturday’s goalless draw against Cardiff City, drew 15,950.

Birmingham’s initiative followed talks between Blues Collective and Kenny Saunders, the founder of the Save Grassroots Football campaign. Saunders has organised several protests over rising pitch fees and poor facilities in grassroots football and, having received little backing from Premier League clubs, views Birmingham’s scheme as an encouraging step.

“It’s fantastic what Birmingham are doing to help teams and leagues in their area,” he said. “They understand the problems in grassroots football and football in general given their own experiences over the last few years. They want more people watching their games, more homegrown players coming into their system and to help grassroots football. Their initiative addresses all of that. We’ve asked Premier League clubs to do this but they don’t need grassroots football. Their grounds are sold out week in, week out, but it would be nice to see all clubs getting behind a national grassroots day each year.

“It has taken one team, a big club like Birmingham, to step forward and do something for grassroots football in their area. If every club ran a similar scheme for just one game a season, backed by the Football League and the Football Association, it would provide massive support for grassroots teams and facilities in their local communities. A national grassroots day every season would keep local leagues keep going for years.”

Birmingham are compiling a league table of tickets sold by each local team and, as well as keeping 50% of the ticket revenue, participants will be invited to take part in a dedicated grassroots day at St Andrew’s next year. Cowen explains: “The scheme is running now but we will be making a feature of it for the Rotherham United game on 3 April. We hope to give teams who are part of the scheme an opportunity to be guard of honour, or to lead the teams out or play on the pitch at half-time. We want to show how it has benefited the teams and leagues involved.

“We get a lot of requests from grassroots teams for kit or signed merchandise to help them financially and this way we give an opportunity to teams that want to help themselves. The scheme is in its infancy but hopefully it will attract hundreds, hopefully even thousands more people to our matches.”