Government and Lottery funding of sport in England is being targeted directly at reducing inactivity among specific groups. This means a reduction in funding for the administration of many of the main sports reliant on that money.
Sport England looks after the grassroots element of state and lottery funding as opposed to UK Sport which is responsible for the high performance side.
Announcements of the first wave of funding in the next four year cycle from 2017-2021 were revealed this week with an amount of £88 million (€105 million) being set aside for 27 sports.
The spending streams are based on application from the sports across three areas of the core market, nurturing talent, addressing the mass market in terms of participation and tackling inactivity.
In this area and in the high performance sector in the UK there is a much more clinical examination of results and potential gain. Four major sports – Badminton, Archery, Fencing and Weightlifting have had all their performance funding removed entirely though each is considering an appeal.
This round of funding shows a major drop in the overall amounts granted with cycling down from £32 million to £17.3 million and cricket also showing a drop of £20 million.
The pain of such losses will be offset by additional funding over the four year cycle and the belief is that this very specific investment over a fixed longer term period will be able to show real results that will then trigger more funding.
Here is the breakdown of how Sport England is distributing the cash
