Last week’s announcement of a variety of grants programmes by the Irish Sports Council generated much coverage on the athlete’s grants but the bulk of the money invested by the taxpayer goes towards sports governing bodies for the provision of programmes aimed at increasing participation and building the importance of sport at community level.
€7.6 million will be spent supporting the participation programmes of the three sports that collectively and in a centrally organised manner reach the greatest number of participants in gaelic games, soccer and rugby.
An additional €840,000 is targeted at dedicated Women in Sport initiatives and we will look at both of these areas in the coming days.
Today though we will look at a number of the sports that have seen the greatest change in funding for 2013 over 2012.
The overall reduction of funding was limited to 3% and this meant that the majority of sports will have less money to operate with over the coming twelve months, making it more important that they seek additional revenue streams through commercial partnerships.
The sports affected include Badminton, Basketball, Volleyball, Cycling, Swimming, Tennis, Camogie and Rowing, all of which join Billiards, Blind Sports, Deaf Sports and Cycling as having to survive on a smaller core funding grant.
Athletics Ireland, the Golfing Union of Ireland and Motor Sport Ireland have seen a small increase in their core funding while Cricket Ireland, the Irish Amateur Archery Association and Fencing are among the smaller number of bigger winners.
Cricket Ireland has seen its core grant rise from €368,000 to €407,000 and with international development funding as well as recent new sponsorships, is becoming the star pupil in how to build programmes that will grow the sport and attract funding.
Archery has secured core funding for 2013 of €48,500 having received none last year.  The sport has clubs around the country and even secured a fourth place finish at the European Indoor Championships in Poland last month.
Fencing has a development strategy in place for 2013-2015 which focuses on producing a better structure for under age participation in the sport and has attracted an increase in funding from €22,000 to €37,000.
Starting next month, as a service to members of the Sport for Business Community, we will start a new series of interviews with leading sports administrators who will explain in their own words the programmes and objectives they have for their sport in the coming years and where they see areas that might be suitable for commercial partnerships.
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