Lifestyle sports delivery and sustainability: clubs, communities and user-managers

ABSTRACT

Lifestyle and informal sports have been recognised by policy makers as offering opportunities to increase participation in physical activity, particularly amongst hard to reach groups. Lifestyle sports are, however, double edged in their potential to achieve these goals. Their playful and non-traditional features may attract new participants less interested in traditional sports but the very liquidity of these activities may mean that the engagement of participants is fragmented and not sustained beyond a particular period in their lives. This article presents the perspective of mountain biking user-managers; those involved in the delivery, clubs and communities of mountain bikers across the United Kingdom. Findings suggest that whilst lifestyle sport communities are dependent on the work of formalised clubs to gain access to the funding and resources they need to sustain their activities, core participants will not always want to have to liaise or become involved formally within a club structure. In addition, clubs will not succeed in delivering sustained activities in line with sport policy to increase and maintain participation by relying on individual grants and without the support of an active informal user community. Accounts highlight the importance of engaging informal user communities with a sense of ownership such as locals to ensure new participants are integrated and the community is able to replenish.

KEYWORDS:

• Informal sports
• mountain biking
• policy
• funding
• hard to reach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine King

Katherine King is a senior academic in the Department for Events and Leisure at Bournemouth University specialising in teaching and research related to sport and leisure cultures.

Andrew Church is Professor in Human Geography at the University of Brighton where he is also Director of Research and Development for the Social Sciences.  He has long-standing research interests on the relationship between sport, tourism, recreation and leisure and the natural environment.  He has also advised national governments on access for sport to outdoor spaces.