Community vs elite sport: the elusive balance

Too often, the raw material for these money making machines – the athletes – are forgotten. They have become commodities in the competitive sports economy. Far more attention must be paid to the long-term career path of Australian athletes. It’s not surprising given this environment that over the past decade major US sports such as basketball, baseball and football have all experienced strikes and disputes over the distribution of revenues.

Australian sporting culture is yet to reach the heights of sponsor- and media-dominated ‘events’ that have so alienated fans overseas. Fortunately for Australians, sport still remains a shared experience that provides an intrinsic sense of our national character. Yet this will only remain the case if there is a direct relationship between elite and community sport at the local level.

Elite sport that relies on spectators and viewers to sustain its advertising and sponsorship base is not manufactured in a vacuum. Therefore junior development initiatives must be equitable, even if this means subsidising rural sports programs. In many respects, we can measure the depth of a sport through its community sport infrastructure, hence the importance of boosting rural and regional sport for young people.

Governments must realise that Australia’s sporting success and ethos will not last unless recreational and competitive community sport is adequately supported through sensible policy and public investment.

Elite vs Participatory Sport

Getting the balance right between participatory sport, where we all get to play, and elite sport, where a few get to play and most get to watch, is not easy.

Community sport, be it simply for the fun and enjoyment of participation, a competitive endeavour or as a stepping stone to professional sport, is being largely marginalised and forgotten in the pursuit of Olympic Gold.

This is ludicrous, as the Olympics should be a catalyst for building community sport in Australia. The value of hosting the Olympics is as much the sporting legacy it leaves behind as it is the prestige and claimed economic benefits.

While it’s easy to focus on statistics about participation and talk about the general benefits of playing sport, it is a far more complex challenge to quantify the positive outcomes that come from physical activities involving families, friends, workplace colleagues and communities which share a common passion for their sport.

A truly effective sports policy must reflect the benefits of physical activity from an economic, social, medical, educational and cultural perspective.

The great benefit of hosting an Olympic Games is that the massive interest and investment in sport is an opportunity to improve the general state of sport at all levels. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity must be used to set innovative agendas and specific goals regarding the future of sport, health and recreation for the next millennium.

Inequities in sporting opportunities

Although in economic terms sport is worth up to $12 billion annually, with Australian households spending over $4 billion every year on sport and recreation (not including monies spent on gambling), not everyone is getting a chance to be involved. There is a role for Government to ensure genuine opportunities exist for everyone to participate. These are the ‘unglamorous’ issues in Australian sport: gender and race.

Male participation rates in sport is far greater than female rates, yet since 1948 Australian women have won 40% of Australia’s Olympic Gold medals even though they have competed in only a quarter of all events! Only 11% of women are national presidents of sporting organisations and women comprise less than 25% of sporting national executives.