Community vs elite sport: the elusive balance

If there is only a limited pool of funds available for sport, is it justifiable for Government to spend millions of dollars on Olympic sport if it means that thousands of ordinary Australians may miss out on the chance to participate in sport altogether?

I don’t think so.

Striking the right funding balance between community sport – be it competitive or recreational – and elite sport, is the major challenge for the Federal Government. This elusive balance will only be found if measuring the relative value of sport to our society goes beyond medals and winning and into issues of healthy lifestyles and even Australia’s cultural identity.

The Sydney Olympics is stealing the limelight, albeit not always for the right reasons. Understandably there is increasing tension within community sports as political attention on Homebush pushes their aspirations and concerns to one side. Questions about whether the concentration on medal tallies and elite sporting programs is coming at the expense of community-based sport need to be asked. In fact, there is an increasing level of uncertainty about the future of sport in light of the mooted broad funding cutbacks post-Olympics.

Cynics would no doubt claim that elite sport will always be supported because its high-profile success and mass-spectator audiences carry far more political weight than does a small community of sporting people.

My fear is that if this holds true, then our mighty sporting ethos has a very limited future and our obsession with elite sporting success may in fact undermine our sporting ethos.

Australian sport has traditionally been socially inclusive and ‘elite’ sport meant that you were good at it, not that you went to an exclusive sporting institution. We are known and respected for playing hard but fair.

We cheer loudest when the underdog wins and we still rejoice in the notion that regardless of where you are from, no matter how rich or poor, you still have a chance of ‘making it’ in sport. That’s what made the America’s Cup win so important. It wasn’t just a yacht race. It was about Australia beating the might and money of America.

These reflections on our national character reinforce how closely sport is linked with Australian cultural identity. We embrace all comers with our strong multicultural spirit – a spirit that in turn has led to community sport becoming a powerful social ballast in times when job security is diminishing and people are feeling uncertain about the future.

Our heroes and heroines are the sports people who achieve national or international success. Our gossip columns are filled not with movie stars but sporting celebrities. Through our interest and devotion, we urge these sports people to take their rightful place on the top of the list of people Australians most admire.

However, our ability to feel a bit of community ownership about our collective sporting success is now under pressure. Unfortunately many sports have evolved in ways that have alienated sporting communities from their elite associations. Big business and the corporate sponsorship dollar now shape most major sports and their respective public ‘events’. The sporting community from which they derived is abandoned, or at best, given mere token attention.

Our sporting culture has grown a new dimension – one governed by the ability to extract advertising revenue from sporting events. This has changed the economics of elite sport and led to some mighty power struggles within corporate sport, often at the expense of community sport.

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.

Imagine how well women would do if they were given equal access, equal facilities, and equal funding?

Too many grounds and recreational centres are not suitable for safe community use. Other reasons many young (and not-so-young) talented people do not continue with sport is lack of public transport to facilities, inadequate lighting of grounds and car parks, lack of proper change rooms and toilets, lack of privacy, and almost no access to childcare.

Reassessing Facilities for Community Benefit

There is a clear role for the federal government to get involved in how existing facilities are used and how future facilities and programs are designed and implemented. Obviously we cannot step back 20 or 30 years and re-plan and re-design existing sporting infrastructures, nor can we formulate some magical program or policy that will automatically increase the levels of community sports participation and create a healthier workforce.

What I think can be done, initially, is to maximise community use of existing facilities (eg, schools, colleges, universities) by making them more accessible to the general public. Too often there are communities or regions where sports facilities serve only a fraction of the population. Too often some sections are well catered for while others have to compete for resources.

The pressure to seek cost recovery has pushed sporting groups to the margin, leaving those who most need support at the greatest disadvantage.

There is a real difference between those small towns, suburbs or communities with good sporting facilities and those without. If you provide a community with a solid level of sport and recreational activities then there is every chance that incidence of crime, vandalism, juvenile offences, alienation and even youth suicide will fall.

A decent football field, netball or basketball court or swimming centre can make an enormous difference to the mental, physical and economic health of a community.

This social benefit of sport is most obvious in Indigenous communities, where sport is an important and positive cohesive force. Again, there is an urgent need for federal support for Aboriginal communities to bring together the necessary resources to build or coordinate the use of facilities.

The success of such ventures will always be determined by the community, so government support must be strategic and reflect the unique needs and aspirations of each community. Organised physical activity can also potentially alleviate many health and social problems that afflict rural youth. The present situation, where some people have access to many facilities, while others have access to none, is frustrating and creates sporting haves and have nots.

Sports funding after 2000

Even though the economics of sport still stack up, the Confederation of Australian Sport points out that if the government spent just $15 million each year for ten years to encourage participation in sport then the net benefits to Australia would be more than a hundred times higher than this additional expenditure!

This demonstrates that there is a role for government in sport, along with other stakeholders: the players, corporate sponsors, the media and community organisations. Furthermore, it points to the need for federal, state and local governments to establish long-term policy directions that go beyond simply having the Commonwealth transferring responsibility to the states.

Back in 1983, the newly elected Labor Government recognised this and set about determining a specific role for the federal government with respect to fostering a national sporting culture. By 1988 Labor had established the Community Recreational and Sporting Facilities Program, which helped Local Government provide basic sport and recreational facilities. By 1991-92 the Government was spending $30 million on this program. Labor also introduced the Next Step funding package aimed at continuing the momentum built up over the previous decade. This measure signified the first ever totally comprehensive sports policy.

Not only did this funding contribute to our international success (Australia gain 27 medals at the 1992 Olympics), it deliberately targeted those at the greatest disadvantage in terms of sporting opportunities. These landmark achievements were largely forgotten, however, when the notorious ‘whiteboard affair’ gave sports infrastructure funding ‘untouchable’ status in political terms.

There will always be debates about funding sport and the merits of using taxpayers’ money to achieve international sporting success. However, because Olympic and elite sport is not likely to suffer in the lead up to Sydney, community sport requires special attention if we are to create a worthwhile Olympic community sport legacy.

In the buildup to the Sydney Olympics it is important not to lose sight of the needs of non-Olympic sports. The fact is that while Australia measures its international standing partly by our sporting success, the well-being of Australians is not determined at the elite level, but at the recreational and community level.