Why does sport have such an issue with good governance?
February 28, 2024
There is a deep irony in the fact that if you care to study how any sport is administered and run it is invariably one of the least co-ordinated and fragmented endeavours you will ever see. In this week’s Member Insight article, Richard Brinkman looks at the perhaps slightly dull issue of good governance in sport. He has shown why it is so important and how poor governance holds sport back. He has used a particular scenario around the governance of Pickleball in the UK to illustrate some points as well as taking a slightly challenging tone in order to make people rethink this mostly overlooked issue.
You would think that every sport would want to optimise the process by which it makes and enforces decisions. That, given the influence and importance each sport purports to have in society, it would want its decision-making, rule-setting and enforcement mechanisms to work efficiently. After all effective governance is essential for maintaining order, addressing the needs of its community/members and achieving any objectives. Furthermore, good governance promotes transparency, fosters trust amongst stakeholders, and adapts to changing circumstances ensuring that any governing body remains responsive and resilient in the pursuit of its goals.
So, in a nutshell, good governance is important (if not vital) to any sport. But yet governance of sport remains uniformly weak and/or poor. Even worse, it seems to be accepted with a shrug of the shoulders with a range of standard “immovable” reasons usually trotted out.
Surely the fact that it can be a dull, worthy and rather dry topic is trumped by its importance? Surely it cannot just be down to the legacy of most governing bodies being formed in a different era with different priorities? Surely the “turkeys voting for Christmas” defence does not really hold water? After all, if this were the case Parliament would still look as it did at the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and every major boardroom would look, act and feel as it did when the business was founded.
Change is possible and, indeed, desirable if those that are the trusted guardians of each sport are to best serve the interests of their sport. Too often one hears the followers of a sport speak of its governing body as “getting in the way” and actively making growth of the game harder. There is a lot of shiny digital content but not a lot of practical assistance or investment.
Does the lack of good governance ultimately really matter though?
In a country where approximately half the population does not really care about sport and where every significant sport (even football) is reliant on some form of tax-payer funding it is inevitable that dispassionate objective bodies will start to ask awkward questions and will expect to see transparent, effective and efficient decision-making that delivers results.
It must surely be a warning-sign to those running sport in the UK when the majority in Parliament believe an “Independent regulator” (of indeterminate shape or form) is needed to oversee the activities of the country’s biggest and most popular sport.
Given the EPL’s offer of a £900m stipend paid across 6 years to support the rest of the football pyramid on which much of its wealth is built it is hard to argue with the parliamentary view. For context, the 23/24 player wages (for a single season) is reckoned to be nearly double the £900m offered (across six years). Meanwhile, deafening silence around the issue from the FA – English football’s governing body.
A major issue, of course, is the over-reach and lack of focus that each governing body usually embodies. Typically, this manifests itself in trying to bridge the often conflicting interests of grass-roots participation, the development and implementation of the rules/processes/procedures/sanctions and the event and media focussed elite end of the sport.
Frequently you will also have thrown into the mix the additional demands of major events in the same sport that have significant financial pull and consumer interest in which a governing body is a key stakeholder but ultimately has no direct control over (think LTA and Wimbledon, the golf Tours and the Majors, the FA and the Premier League etc).
These kinds of conflicts and their complications are nicely illustrated by the current debate raging relating to who should run Pickleball in the UK moving forward.
On the one hand you have a highly dedicated and passionate group of volunteers who have rapidly built-up a regular player base of around 12,000. This obviously has scope to grow given its current trajectory, the path of Padel and a playing base of some 9m (still only c3% of the population) in the US.
On the other you have the professional experience of the LTA, its 350+ full-time employees and £80m+ annual income.
The LTA can clearly point towards 2023s best UK participation in tennis figures in over a decade and many years of experience (and many lessons learned) in how to grow a player base whilst developing facilities and infrastructure.
The concerns of those currently running Pickleball is that it will just become a poor relation to the LTA’s main concern of growing traditional tennis.
Padel was formerly merged into the LTA in 2019 having grown rapidly since it arrived (in a structured form) in the UK in 2014. Padel is currently reckoned to have c175,000 regular players so dwarfs Pickleball. However, there are reports that there is disquiet amongst the Padel community about how it is viewed and treated by the LTA. Most of the 300 new Padel courts built since 2019 have been developed by private investors and only £3.9m has been loaned to tennis clubs in relation to Padel.
Inevitably there is also some ego involved in the debate. Those passionate people currently running Pickleball are very upset that the LTA seems not to accept Pickleball as its own sport but rather see it as a feeder into tennis, part of their “Tennis Opened Up” strategy. One can appreciate their point but, taking an objective view, when one is a niche of a niche using wider and deeper professional resources to encourage more people to get moving and involved in racket sports is surely the only way to go.
The alternative is for Pickleball to continue to plough its own furrow and rely on its own income streams. This will likely leave it a small, dedicated and admittedly probably happier tribe.
A board meeting of Sport England will decide Pickleball’s fate in the coming weeks. If you were cynical you might say this is akin to appointing Anne Widecombe or John Sargeant as Strictly’s next head judge given SE’s questionable track record over the past 20 years of getting the country moving/more active! However, I am sure that the weighty process and procedures generally followed by Sport England will ensure that a reasonable decision is reached.
My betting is that that decision will suit the larger majority, assuming they are represented by the LTA, rather than the dedicated band who love Pickleball. The fact that Pickleball England recently filed freedom-of-information requests into SE’s decision-making process suggests they may be suspecting the same.
My advice would be to brace for the inevitable and focus on getting as influential a voice for Pickleball within the existing governance. After all, this is what good governance should be – a reactive and responsive system that adapts to changing circumstances and reflects the needs of its entire community through a transparent process. Perhaps, this compromise can even be reached without Sport England’s involvement – or would that be asking too much of those that represent sport’s best interests?
