Alternative revenue streams for centrally funded sport governing bodies

ABSTRACT

In a world of ever-increasing focus on Government spending as a result of recession-induced austerity measures, the current Government of the United Kingdom has clarified its intention to share and ultimately transfer the burden of funding to those sports that currently enjoy Government support. Outside the sports that, due to their wide commercial and broadcast appeal are able to derive significant revenues, it will become necessary for national governing bodies (NGBs) to cast the net wide in search of consistent, reliable methods of generating revenues that satisfy broader stakeholder aims while maintaining focus on their core responsibilities of sport development, encouraging participation and driving performance. In order to unpick this process, interviews were undertaken with senior officials from non-commercialised NGBs to better grasps the current situation and what steps are being taken to secure funding with further exploration of the impact of these new streams. Using Pfeffer and Salancik’s Resource Dependence Theory and Markowitz’s Portfolio Theory, this study examines the revenue streams currently explored by the NGBs, as well as their associated benefits and pitfalls. Through this research, it was found that the applicability of each stream was largely dependent on the unique characteristics of each body. Size and demographics of membership or participants, the degree of formality of participation, local or regional importance of the sport and commercial appeal to potential sponsors and partners, all drove the particular mix of revenue streams achieved by NGBs, making generalisation or the creation of a usable, common template difficult as a result.

KEYWORDS:

• Government policy
• UK policy
• sport NGBs
• austerity
• sport governance
• sport policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The term ‘government’ in this study is referring to the current Conservative Government of the UK (2010-today).

2. It is suggested that the two characteristics that make goods and services worth funding and trading in the market are rivalness (‘my use of the good leaves less for you’) and excludability (‘I can keep you from using this good’) (Fisher et al. 2009, p.7).

3. UK Sport is the funding body for elite sport, while Sport England deals with grassroots and amateur sports.

4. One individual acted as the Senior Commercial Officer for two national governing bodies. A two-part interview took place with this interviewee in order for information for both NGBs to be acquired.

5. The Active People Survey (APS) was a survey conducted by Sport England in order to measure the number of adults taking part in sport across England.

6. For purposes of brevity, in this appendix we exhibit a much shorter version of the actual tables used during data analysis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rostron Berry

Rostron Berry following a long career in financial markets, commodity trading and asset management, he has now turned his attention to sport management, through his research in Loughborough University.

Argyro Elisavet Manoli

Argyro Elisavet Manoli is a in Loughborough University, coming from a sport marketing practitioner background in professional football clubs.