There is a direct link to the money spent on sport and the number of medals won at major games. Australia demonstrated this this back in the 1980s. At the 1976 Montreal Olympic, Australia didn’t win a single gold medal. Then they started the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport). Now Australia kick arse at the Olympics, being ranked forth on the 2024 Paris Olympic medal table. This is a direct result of investment in sport. 

If the AIS was not enough, look at Great Britain. Before London was awarded the 2012 Olympic games, Great Britian did well at on the medal table, yet were “only” ranked 10^th on the medal table. Then something changed……. Money and investment. The direct result is so many more athletes winning medals, and in so many different sports. 

Money being invested into sport is does not make the sport great - it is all about how the money is used. And there’s the rub! Sports funding is complicated.

Many countries have a system, that works a little like this: the government gives money to a funding agency, which then they set policy to say how this money is split. This policy is normally based on Olympic medals, and top event result. Your past results often dictate how much funding you get in the future. The funding agency then distributes the money to Federations or National Sports Organisations, who spend it on systems, coaches and athletes (of course this a way over simplified). Added to this, some funding organisations may specify how they expect the money to be spent. 

When a funding agency tells a Federation how to spend the money they receive, it can make it difficult for a sporting organisation to work well and efficiently. Staff and coaches can end up spending more time on paperwork than looking after athletes. Also, athletes don’t always understand or aren’t told about some of the funding issue. Joel Filliol has spoken about his issues within federations, which highlight some of these funding issues. Yet having a clear structure in a sport is only part of the equation. A federation also needs staff and managers who care about athletes and their development, over the long-term! 

All this creates a self-fulfilling policy. Sports that have had success get funded more, so they keep having success. Yet if a sport has a bad Olympic cycle, money can disappear, staff lose jobs, and development slows down or stops. 

This makes it challenging for Federation staff Who must constantly prove that they deserve their jobs. This often means huge amounts of paperwork. In many countries, Federations rely on clubs or external coaches to develop athletes, so the federation can use them for funding purposes.

Of course, this is a standard issue and is normal for many countries. Some people understand the system; others have no idea. The question is: How do we fix it? How do we make funding work better? How does a funding agency ensure the money is being used effectively and that a federation is not just claiming they have talent and hoping someone appears…….. These are important questions and ones I’m trying to get my head around. 

What is clear is that we cannot expect an underfunded sport to have development programmes and support comparable to highly funded sports.  As a result, everything must be scaled differently - staff, expectations, and the paperwork expected from Federations to funding agencies.  In my experience, this is not the case.  Where I work, the same levels are expected as in a major mainstream sport.

This is the start. The next blog will start to look at how Federations fund athletes, and development. This is easier to get some clear numbers on, and I will do what I can to use a mixture of sports – major sports and smaller sports.