Football & Tennis Receive Funding Threat
Tennis and football have been warned by Sport England that part of their public funding could be cut if improvements are not made, after both sports suffered big drops in participation throughout the country in body’s latest Active People Survey.
Sport England, which distributes Lottery money at grassroots level, claims that tennis failed to capitalise on Andy Murray’s Wimbledon win in July, while football has dropped from second to fourth behind athletics and cycling in terms of participation, with swimming the most popular.
In more positive news, Sport England claims the figures mean the original participation boost garnered from the London 2012 Olympic Games has been maintained, with a 15.426m people taking part in sport each week, an improvement of 206,000 from April this year.
However, the numbers of people participating in sport is actually down by just over 50,000 from this time last year.
Sport England will now hold meetings with the Lawn Tennis Association and Football Association before deciding in the new year whether up to 20% of their funding will be suspended.
Tennis had a previous £530,000 funding cut imposed earlier this year, and could lose more of its £17.4m four-year award after participation fell from 423,400 in April to 406,000.
Meanwhile football’s participation numbers are down to 1.83m, a drop of 100,000 since April, putting part of its previously agreed £30m funding award for the 2013-17 period at risk.
The LTA will also have a new chief executive, Mike Downey who is coming from Canadian tennis, starting in January.
Sport England’s figures, which are compiled twice a year, in April and October, focus on the number of people aged 16 and over playing at least 30 minutes of sport at moderate intensity at least once a week.
The feel-good factor from Britain’s cycling successes at London 2012, coupled with Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome winning successive Tour de France titles, has helped make cycling the stand-out performer from the latest figures, increasing participation by 137,000 from April to October 2013.
