Last week’s unveiling of the core funding to be provided in 2026 by Sport Ireland to the National Governing Bodies of Sport and Local Sports Partnerships was covered in a new story on Sport for Business here.

The amount of money was up 6.5 per cent on last year and topped €33 million.

Additional funding towards high performance and via other channels, including the Community Sports Fund, the Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund, and Dormant Accounts Funding, will be published in the coming weeks and months, but the Coire Funding announcement is worth diving into in a little more detail in its own right.

Over the next four days, we will do that, initially looking at how the funding has grown in both percentage and absolute terms over the period from 2018 to 2026, then doing the same for the Local Sports Partnerships, and then honing in on some of the specific areas, including how digital transformation and ageing population shifts are translating into policy and funding.

First, let’s take a look at the Top 20 sporting NGBs in terms of percentage growth over the course of this nine-year period.

 

 

And then keeping the same order, but translating that percentage growth into an absolute number.

 

Clearly the absolute number is the one that pays for development officers, programmes and core activities and is therefore the most important, but looking at the percentage increase is not without benefit as it shows a trend over this period of time.

These are the numbers that will establish the benchmark for what has been achieved over the course of the National Sports Policy and what will form the basis of the targets and the evidence on what might be given prominence in the next version of that which is already in the early stages of planning.

Kudos must go to Triathlon ireland for delivering a percentage increase that is double the size of all bar four of the others in this Top 20 listing.

Special mention also to Tennis Ireland which has performed the double ace of featuring in second place in terms of percentage increase and third in the absolute number.

 

 

Image Credit: Sport for Business

 

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