Nudge for life
Policy priorities coming out of the pandemic
I addressed a bunch of politicians, advisors and sports industry types at a Westminster Forum this week. Subject was the challenges facing sport and the public funding priorities as we come out of the pandemic. The risk on these occasions is that you get caught in an echo chamber, telling the audience what it already thinks it knows. With that caveat in mind, these were my thoughts.
The greatest threat to the financial health of professional sport right now is diminished crowds at events. Anecdotal insights, backed up by the evidence of one’s own eyes, suggest an unwillingness on the part of a significant number of fans to venture back into stadia - either through fear of the virus or simply having fallen out of the habit of attendance. Just check out the number of empty seats.
The biggest occasions are still in high demand. A Lords test match, Ronaldo’s return to Old Trafford, NFL at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. But it is no coincidence that Pep Guardiola has made headlines calling for Man City fans to get along to the Etihad. And if Premier League clubs are having to work harder than usual to fill their grounds, what hope lesser clubs and lesser sports?
When the pandemic slashed event revenues to zero last summer, the UK government stepped in with a series of emergency loans to shore up organisers’ finances. The programme bore the understandable hallmarks of rushed decisions and some of the money sits untouched on governing body balance sheets.
Now that live sport is back, politicians need to decide whether the fall in spectators warrants any further, more considered intervention. Some sports will right themselves over time given the sheer scale of their followers. Others, though, may be severely damaged, the pandemic accelerating long term declines. Rugby league springs immediately to mind. Is the sport so much part of the national fabric that it is worthy of special assistance?
Castlefield v Wakefield, February 2020, attendance 7,200. Same match, August 2021, 4,987. As flagged in this insightful Guardian piece Super League crowds
The answer, sport by sport, must lie in the connectivity of professional competition to grassroots participation. Because the greatest challenge lies in general levels of (in)activity within a UK population with a high propensity to obesity - as laid bare by the ravages of the pandemic.
Us sports leaders like to claim that elite sportspeople inspire the nation to get active. But if we’re honest, we can’t prove that. London 2012 doesn’t appear to have had any lasting impact on the nation’s activity levels - although it is possible that without the Olympics they might have been even lower.
Already there are calls for next year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham to succeed on the inspiration front where London failed. To do that, there has to be the capacity in venues, in trained coaches and in local club volunteers to absorb any Games-inspired bump in demand as kids decide they want to try out sports. Lifetime habits are not formed in a single taster session.
Right now, the picture on the facilities front is very gloomy. Many leisure centres remain closed. Often those that have reopened have cranked up their prices. One competition venue we use at GB Wheelchair Rugby doubled its hire rate for a weekend. Badminton England tells me participation in its sport is currently only around 60% of pre-pandemic levels, with venue access a critical factor. It estimates on average 44% of open venues were unavailable for badminton - the nation’s most played racket sport - over the past eighteen months.
And if a sport can’t be played, it is no surprise that governing bodies and clubs are taking a financial hit from reduced membership numbers, or from extending membership years to reflect lockdown months. England Athletics suffered a 24% fall in membership in the first year of the pandemic. England Netball has also reported a 25% drop in affiliation fees.
Most worrying is the slump in organised activity for youngsters. One London rugby club tells me of a 50% drop in minis membership, and their cricket counterpart practically destroyed.
“Rugby is going to face a tough few years. Hard to go back to a contact sport after a long break. Children have lost so much. They don’t say much but it’s been grim.” London club volunteer
Many sports facilities are directly owned by local councils, or are under their effective control. And the economics at local level just don’t work. It’s tough to balance the books without any financial credit from the Department of Health for boosting healthiness, and so leisure centre lights stay off. If you doubt the reality, just check out the furore in Cornwall where four key centres - from Falmouth to Wadebridge - remain shut.
Government, then, needs an overarching strategy for the provision of multi-purpose sports facilities - and a willingness to spend accordingly. At present money flows piecemeal to those smartest enough to work a system built on disparate pots of funding. But often it is those least savvy in lobbying who represent the corners of society most in need of sporting opportunity.
If we can ensure the nation has places to play, let’s then look for interventions to encourage its children to use them - not just rely on kids being inspired by sports stars they might see on a screen.
My starter for ten? A £50 voucher for all 11-16 year olds that can be redeemed to join a club, go on a course or camp, enter competitions, swim in a pool or use a leisure centre. A nudge for life.
That’s under £300 million, even if all vouchers were spent. Repeat every year and you should help form some really worthwhile habits. And the multiplier effect in healthcare savings could be phenomenal.
Finally, while on the subject of funding, I’ll make no apology for saddling up my favourite hobby horse - the inequality in UK Sport’s funding of Britain’s Paralympians when compared with their Olympic counterparts. Currently it is 70% lower on a per head basis. Iniquitous!
Healthy minds too
And if you thought staging sport was difficult, try the theatre. Current reticence to go to a stadium seems multiplied when it comes to the stage. It could be the older age demographic, perhaps the indoor setting (although that hasn’t stopped No Time To Die packing out cinemas), or just maybe that a year-plus absence erodes a habit.
A handful of theatre trips in London and the shires in recent weeks have revealed venues that are often no more than half full, even for well-reviewed productions. An industry source tells me aggregate audiences for musicals are up 10% on pre-pandemic levels (the desire for feel-good escapism at work), but for West End plays they are down around a whopping 30%. I view elite sport as theatre with an unscripted ending. Let’s hope the surprise finish isn’t permanent closures in both industries.
Howzat?!
I’ve been bowled over with feedback to my open application for the role of ECB chair last week. Please keep it coming! I was most tickled by this response in the County Cricket Matters group on Facebook, which neatly encapsulates the bind the ECB finds itself in.
“Does he know anything about cricket? If so, he is overqualified.”