Permanent waves

Out with the old and in with the not so new

Permanent waves - Paul Breitner and Kevin Keegan (source: talksport)

The list of key challenges to Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic sporting system in an email from UK Sport’s CEO made me sit up. It was refreshing in its honesty - a hallmark of the current leadership. The standout threat identified, at least to my eyes, was termed ‘relevancy’. Specifically, the expectations of young audiences. It is not just the quadrennial twin circuses, next pitching tents in Paris in 2024, that should be fretting about rapidly changing demographics though.

2023 will be dominated, at least for British sports fans, by the Ashes series, women’s FIFA World Cup and men’s Rugby World Cup. Aside of course from the constant that is club football. The Ryder Cup will claim fleeting attention, albeit suffused by toxic arguments about the eligibility of LIV golfers. Which of these, though, will captivate the young? And will anyone aside from the aging cognoscenti (like me) even notice a World Athletics Championships only thirteen months after the last one?

The median age of Americans watching the Olympics on TV is just under 50, and gets higher every time the Games comes around. This statistic doesn’t mean that the jamboree will die when its established audience does. After all, younger fans don’t typically consume sport in a traditional linear fashion on the box, finding other ways to engage instead.

But throwing in a few sports appealing to Gen Z is unlikely to be sufficient to sustain the Olympics’ relevancy. The US will doubtless see a surge in interest around Los Angeles 2028, but Britain’s experience is that hosting the Games marks a high watermark in domestic interest. France beware.

In conversations with young relatives recently I’ve been struck by how swiftly their interest in any sport bar football wanes once the novelty of early years participation in it wears off. My holiday period interactions, following swiftly on from the exhilaration of the Qatar World Cup, might be unscientific, but they are borne out by data on grassroots playing numbers and anecdotes from volunteers running clubs. And not just numbers for kids’ sport either: adults too.

Just reflect on the state of grassroots rugby in Wales, for example, as described in this article in the Cardiffian. Too many teams and too few players creates a vicious cycle of cancelled games, one-sided contests and frustrated volunteers.

Sport England tracks the nation’s physical activity levels. Overall they have been flatlining in recent years, allowing for a dip during the pandemic. Most striking trend underneath the headline has been the decline in team sports. Where 3.5 million adults took part in team sports twice a month in 2015/16, that number dropped to 3.0 million over the next three years and then slumped to 2.2 million in 2020/21. The next survey is published in the spring and will be a telling test of the allure of team sports with Covid restrictions lifting.

Source: Sport England

In the short term, none of this matters to those selling tickets for the biggest sporting events. The challenge though comes lower down the pyramid - and not very far down it at that. Love of a sport is created in young, malleable hearts and minds, usually on the field of play itself. Tomorrow’s ticket buyers are today’s kids with muddy knees. As core audiences age, so run-of-the-mill events - the week-in, week-out bread and butter of professional sport - suffer.

Both the current cost of living crisis and the damage to leisure habits wrought by the pandemic are also taking their toll. Look at the parallels in the non-sporting entertainment industries. The Times reports analysis showing 2022 global movie revenues down almost 40% on pre-pandemic levels. Optimists blame a lack of product as a result of production difficulties in the pandemic, but that’s a hell of a recovery needed.

The Glastonbury website melted down when tickets for this year’s event went on sale, but smaller music festivals have folded. London theatres continue to gamble on big name stars filling venues at high ticket prices, but overall audiences remain well down on three years ago.

Why is football in Britain seemingly impervious? Where rugby union and league attendances are down and county cricket memberships static, why are football’s numbers up at all levels of the game in spite of the financial black holes at many clubs? Can this really be a permanent up wave? All we can say with certainty, is that for now all other sports can only chip away at the edges of football’s hegemony. In the longer term, their success - or even survival - lies in finding new ways to ingrain love and lifelong habits in the young.

Awks!

As a beneficiary of the honours system many moons ago, I’m loathe to voice any criticism, but the King’s first list was striking in two regards. Firstly, the paucity of awards to athletes who won medals across last summer in the Commonwealth Games and various championships. I’m pleased for the organisers of the CWG who were rightly recognised, but the message for the athletes who starred could be taken to be that only the Olympics matter now. If so, that’s wrong.

Secondly, while the breaking of the tradition that every squad member in a triumphant team is recognised is long overdue, it seems overly harsh that only four Lionesses were honoured. Why was the line drawn where it was? Doesn’t every footballing success start at the back? I’d have had keeper Mary Earps on my list after she conceded only twice in six games at the Euros.

“The approach that we’ve tried to take with this is when we have these events there is a danger in sort of carpet bombing the entire squad because then you get people who’ve done five minutes on the pitch and get an award.” Sir Hugh Robertson, chair of the sports honours committee

If you’ve ever been involved in nominating a person for an honour, you’ll know there is nothing so awkward as someone declining to add a letter of support for your nominee. Apart that is from finding a way to politely decline to provide one yourself for a candidate you don’t happen to think worthy. And then there is the sometimes indefinite wait for your nominee’s name to appear. What is it that the committee sees in them that you don’t? Have they been blackballed? Time for the process to be streamlined and the gathering of support letters to be consigned to history. New monarch, new rules of the game?

I do like to be beside the seaside

Every transaction needs a willing buyer and willing seller. In football, that buyer needs to be pumped full of optimism. Step forward AFC Bournemouth’s new owner Bill Foley, adamant his team won’t be relegated and that he can attract playing talent for reasonable wages, based on his experience owning the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights. I’m not sure Dorset is the tax haven he imagines though:

“The first year, everyone laughed at us. They thought we were a joke – we’re playing hockey in the desert. How can that be? Then we invested in facilities, we did a good job on the draft and after the first year, players wanted to come to Las Vegas. It’s got tax benefits, it’s a great place to live to bring up a family. It’s not the strip, it’s really a community.

“And Bournemouth has got all that. And it’s on the ocean. Who wouldn’t want to come to Bournemouth and play football?”