Firstly, governments view the health (physical and mental) of the population as a priority.

Aside from the humanitarian reasons, from a purely financial standpoint is to cheaper to keep people out the healthcare system than it is to treat them once they find themselves requiring it.

Prevention is cheaper than the cure.

Sport plays an important role in community cohesion and encourages closer social connections. In addition to the sense of belonging that sports clubs offer, the related investment also improves local amenity through better infrastructure.

Australia’s relatively young post-colonial history has led to some uncertainty of its place on the world stage, and sport has provided the country with a focal point. This sense of identity and pride has become entrenched in the Australian psyche.

HOW is sport funded from a government perspective?

At federal level, the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) is the Australian Government agency responsible for supporting and investing in sport, and does so to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The ASC oversees two arms - Sport Australia (SA), and the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS).

SA is responsible for driving the broader sport sector including participation, supporting activities linked to sport and sport industry growth.

The AIS leads our high-performance sport system.

At state level each jurisdiction is slightly different, but from a Victorian perspective, there has certainly been a noticeable (and welcome) trend in recent years of focusing on active recreation and participation at state level, rather than high performance.

WHICH sports are funded?

Australia’s ‘Winning Edge’ strategy was a ten-year plan introduced in late 2012 on the back of a worse than expected medal return in London 2012. The aim was to base funding allocations around supporting sports regarded as representing the best Olympic medal prospects.

It was viewed as innovative and damaging in equal measure by opposing camps.

Its supporters argued that it made economic sense to rationalize resources, and concentrate them on areas where we are most likely to see a measurable return on the investment. The thinking is “We are strong at swimming (for example), so let’s keep looking after that sport and increase investment to win even more medals, because we seem to be good at it”.

Critics argued that this approach ignored sports for whom the Olympics was not their pinnacle (e.g. soccer), and left vital development programs underneath the elite level underfunded, and therefore threatened future participation and performance levels. It locks under-performing sports into an endless cycle of lack of improvement due to lack of funds, which in turn will never arrive due to a lack of success. The parameters of success were also seen as very narrow by many – being 4th in the Olympics may not result in a medal, but still represents a genuinely elite performance.

Winning Edge saw the AIS’ standing gradually diminished. It was increasingly accused of being elitist, distant and irrelevant to many – an unloved federal folly slowly crumbling in the Canberra suburbs. Several facilities lay dormant unless used as a high-end destination by local Canberra schools.

When the medal return in Rio 2016 was even worse than in London four years earlier, the fate of the program was sealed.

It was officially dumped in 2017 mid-way through the originally planned cycle, though some suggest that it is still in place, albeit in spirit if not in name.

The 2018 launch of the ‘Sport 2030 – National Sport Plan’ is the current guiding document, and the layman could be forgiven for wondering if this is just Winning Edge re-badged.

Podium success is front and centre of the new plan, with ‘Principle 1 - Outcome Focused’ stating that they will prioritise investment in Olympic and Commonwealth Games (inc. para) success.

A glance at the 2021-22 FY Investment Allocation is enlightening, and also reminiscent of Winning Edge’s medal obsession:

• In 2021-22, Sport Australia will distribute a total of around $17 million in Core Participation Funding (Participation).
• The AIS committed around $116 million to 34 Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games sports for the 2021-22 FY (Performance). It gave zero dollars to 19 other sports.
• 87% of funding went towards High Performance, with only 13% to Participation.
• $81m went towards the 8 highest funded sports. In order, these were swimming, cycling, athletics, rowing, sailing, basketball, hockey and paddle (this article is not intended as a criticism of these sports at all - it merely seeks to highlight systematic inequities).
• This means that 61% of all funding is being spread across just 13% of NSO/NSOD’s.

Big Sport or Small Sport?

Having worked for both a large National Sports Organization and in my current role leading a State Sports Organization with a smaller footprint, I see both sides of the argument.

On one hand, a flagship NSO with healthy revenues, budgets and participation reach can ‘touch’ more individuals by virtue of its existing brand awareness, product offerings and field force.

Fish where the fish are, right? Favouring smaller sports over larger sports might be a ‘nice’ thing to do, but if you want to fill a hole, using a big shovel will do it quicker – or so the argument goes.

On the other hand, not everyone likes the bigger commercial sports. Females and recent migrants in particular  are often likely to gravitate towards what might be viewed as minority sports, and have traditionally struggled for mainstream representation in sports such as AFL, cricket and rugby.

Whilst 100 people spread across 10 sports might make each sport appear smaller compared with the football club with 100 members, ultimately both numbers add up to the same sum of participants.

How can an emerging sport grow to the extent it is a medal candidate if it receives no development funding? Without investment, the cycle of perceived under-performance would seem impossible to break.

And shouldn’t the ‘big’ sports re-invest some of their own cash reserves derived from bumper TV deals and commercial agreements into the growth of their own sport?

Clearly, both sides of the argument have merit. It is a question of achieving balance between the two, rather than making a choice.

They are actually complementary if structured correctly – better investment in grassroots sport will increase the participation base, and therefore the talent pool available to those concerned with high performance.

A New Direction?

There is no magic wand here (though a National Lottery would help!), and the matter is an emotional and complex one, especially in Australia's federated sports landscape.

However, a non-exhaustive list of some changes to improve the current funding model could include:

• A more consistent and transparent formula to distribute funding (more consistent and transparent than the current AIS High Performance investment guidelines, at least).
• Look beyond just Olympic & Commonwealth results, and also incorporate performance at relevant World Championships (or similar) into the equation.
• Other non-medal factors, whether existing or aspirational, could also be factored in – such as gender equity, membership numbers, casual participants, para-access, ethnicity, age diversity, year-on-year percentage growth, etc.
• A better split between High Performance & Participation funding - the current 87/13% split ($116m v $17m) split in favour over high performance over grassroots support seems horribly skewed and short-sighted.
• A coordinated funding approach across federal and state levels of government. Whilst sport is just a microcosm of the inefficiency of the federal model in general, it is nonetheless frustrating to see so much inconsistency, duplication and bureaucracy across the government funding landscape.
• Audit the sector and plug the gaps - it is frustrating to see the same gaps across the system not sufficiently funded by either level of government, such as sub-elite High Performance (i.e. emerging talent at State level). Ask the NSO/NSDO’s what they need, and give them greater autonomy and flexibility on where funds are spent in their sports - after all, they are the experts.

Link to original article:  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/better-government-funding-model-australian-sport-ritchie-hinton/