Sport participation: From policy, through facilities, to users’ health, well-being, and social capital

Highlights

•	The implications of a layered sports system policy and management on participation are examined.
•	Facility objectives differ across public and private sector facilities.
•	Users report no difference in impact on their health, wellbeing, and social capital.
•	The impact of neoliberalism in delivering sport outcomes is explored.

Abstract

Sport delivery systems, aimed at facilitating sports participation, represent an inter-institutional, cross-sector collaboration. Researchers focusing on the impact of different levels of sport provision from policy, through facilities, to end users remains limited. The authors address this gap in knowledge through a mixed- methods approach to examine sport participation from the perspective of the whole delivery system. Specifically, focusing on a County Sport Partnership region in the UK, the authors examine sport participation from the policy (macro), facility (meso), and end user (micro) levels. Regional heads responsible for sport development and delivery participated in semi-structured interviews, facility-level managers completed a survey, and end-users across public, private, and outsourced facilities participated in focus groups. Results show a clear divergence between the sport policy goals across the private and public sectors, with significant differences observed between facility types on their social and commercial objectives and their prioritized stakeholder groups. The divergence has little impact on user participation or expression of health, wellbeing, and social capital, offering new evidence on the role of neoliberalism in sport delivery systems.

Keywords:

• Sport participation
• Sport delivery
• Health
• Wellbeing
• Social capital
• Policy

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge financial support from the British Academy: Grant number SRG 2015-16. Although dissemination is encouraged by the funder they played no part in the study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the article for publication.