Broadcasting rights are a hot topic: recently we’ve heard that the Six Nations will consider offers from Pay to View television operators for its next UK broadcast rights deal, we’ve learned that Sky will broadcast The Open Championships from 2017, and then of course there’s the Sky/BT £5 billion mega-deal for the Premier League. With regards to the Six Nations and The Open, both these stories were greeted with an outcry: moving to Pay to View is regarded by many as selling out – chasing the big bucks at the expense of keeping the ‘bigger picture’ in sight. This bigger picture takes into account not just revenue, but the sport’s popularity at grassroots level – and the associated health and social benefits of participation in sport. It is assumed that this correlates with TV viewing figures, but delve a little deeper and the evidence does not unequivocally suggest that in order to support this bigger picture, live sporting events must remain on terrestrial television.
participation
Inactivity in London’s Olympic borough shows us that the problem runs far deeper than facilities
Two years on from London’s £8.77bn Olympic Games, the borough which hosted it, Newham, is the least active borough in the UK, according to a new report from UK Active. Almost 40% of Newham’s population is inactive: that is to say, they do not reach 30 minutes of moderate exercise each week. To win an Olympic bid, the host nation must demonstrate that their games will have a ‘legacy’: some longevity, some lasting benefits for the taxpayers who will fund it, some tangible positive effects once the games have been and gone. A key element of London’s Olympic legacy, we were told, was the provision of affordable facilities in one of London’s most deprived areas, facilities which would get more Londoners more active more often. That Newham is the least active borough in the UK will, for some, call into question the very existence of a legacy at all. To dismiss the Olympic legacy (that vaguest of terms) on the basis of this statistic alone would be rash, but what it does show us is this: the issue of inactivity and its causes runs far, far deeper than perhaps we first thought.
School Sport and the Gender Gap: the UK Does Not Need a Title IX; It Needs Transparency
A government report entitled ‘Women and Sport’ was published last month highlighting the discrepancy in participation rates in sport between men and women, across all age groups. The report explores a plethora of possible explanations for this, many of them deep-rooted and all of them interlinked. A major problem area which the report explores is that of school sport. That only 38% of seven year-old girls are achieving the recommended amount of physical activity, compared to 63% of boys, is as good a statistic as any to illustrate that school sport is exactly where we should be looking to address the discrepancy between male and female participation rates.
Transport for London were right to spend £6m of the cycling budget on hosting the Tour de France
This week a BBC employee revealed on Twitter that part of the costs of the London leg of the Tour de France came from TfL’s cycling budget. Apparently TfL spent £6m of the cycling budget on hosting the Tour. The news prompted indignation from some quarters, with the tweet itself (from BBC London Transport & Environment correspondent, Tom Edwards) generating a number of outraged responses. The Tour de France is a cycling event. The TfL cycling budget exists to be spent on cycling, so why the furore?
Why the egg and spoon race matters
Self-esteem: the buzzword at the core of our society’s approach to raising and educating happy, successful children. In a bid to nurture young people’s confidence, positive affirmation is the order of the day; criticism, much less failure, is totally off-limits. One manifestation of this is the gradual erosion of competitive elements from primary school sport. Fuelled, I suspect, by horror stories about school PE from those who did not enjoy it, this elimination of competition has negated some of the key benefits that sport in schools should bring. From teamwork and leadership to discipline and focus, the benefits that participation in sport can offer stretch far beyond the physical, and at the heart of this is competition: learning to fail and learning to succeed.
Tracksuits and life jackets: how to improve the link between grassroots and the elite
Olympians and juniors warm-up together at the BCU April Sprint Regatta
This weekend I attended a British Canoe Union National Sprint Regatta for the first time. Over the course of two days, and more than two hundred races, competitors battled it out, taking on both each other and the weather. What struck me was not the range of races, endless though they were, but the range of competitors taking part.
Do medals matter?
In 1996 Britain won just one medal at the Olympic Games. In the aftermath everyone wanted to know just where it had all gone wrong. The public was embarrassed, the media raucous. Something, apparently, had to change.
Why Scotland must stay (in the 6 Nations)
Prior to Scotland’s last-gasp defeat of Italy in Rome last weekend, much talk was being bandied around regarding Scotland’s future in the 6 Nations, Paul Hayward leading the charge with his recent piece in The Telegraph[1]. A defeat to nil by England at Murrayfield was regarded by Hayward, among others, as the straw that broke the camel’s back after a series of disappointing performances from the Scottish side. All sorts of statistics were dug up from the doldrums in an attempt to illustrate that Scotland were no longer a side fit for top-flight international rugby: that they have won only two out of their last 12 fixtures, that they have 3 wooden spoons to their name since the 5 Nations became the 6 Nations in 2000 (which, incidentally, means that they have not finished last in 11 out of the last 14 tournaments, but to mention that would be to detract from the headline making sensationalism our media so enjoys). Scotland couldn’t compete, couldn’t win, they couldn’t even produce a pitch worthy of an international fixture at Murrayfield – they should go.
Closing the gender gap
1.8 million is a lot of people. It’s the population of Kosovo or the Gambia. It’s roughly the number of undergraduates currently studying in Britain. It’s also the gap between the number of women participating in sport in the UK, and the number of men. 1.8million more men than women take part in sport on a regular basis each year.
Sporting Speak 