FA Loses £1.6m After Grassroots Decline

The Football Association has been stripped of £1.6m in funding by Sport England, after failing to reverse the decline in participation that has continued since 2006.

The national game was one of six sports to have its funding reduced, with golf the next most affected – losing £500,000 of its budget – while netball, hockey, rowing and mountaineering also had its funding cut.

However, despite a recent decline in numbers, cricket, rugby union and badminton escaped cuts after managing to demonstrate that plans were in place to increase grassroots interest. 

Football was by far the worst hit following Sport England’s latest Active People Survey figures – published last December – which revealed a significant drop in people playing the game regularly. 

It showed there were 100,000 fewer people playing the sport than in April, with 1.84 million participating for at least 30 minutes every week, down from more than two million eight years ago.

Sport England warned the FA last year that it could lose up to 20% of its £30m overall public funding package for the four-year period 2013-17 if it failed to halt the fall in numbers.

While the cut of £1.6m is small in comparison to the FA’s overall turnover – which was more than £300m in 2012 – it represents 10% of the remaining money specifically allocated to it for increasing participation.