Sport fans love their statistics, and increasingly so do sports administrators. Annual reports of the CEOs for all major Australian sports now include tables on TV viewership figures, marketing and sponsorship revenues and, of course, participation numbers.
The accuracy with which certain sports in Australia, notably cricket, collate and even inflate participation numbers was criticized this year. To be fair, all sports rush onto various multimedia platforms and interpret Sport Australia’s annual release of participation numbers in sport to their own advantage – football will say it is the strongest sport overall; netball will say it has a significant reach among women and girls and so on.
Australia’s enthusiasm for consuming sport doesn’t seem to extend to actually playing it. Picture: Shutterstock
And yet there was silence in Australian sport about arguably the most authoritative study about child participation in sport that we have seen this century.
In November, The Lancet published a survey on how 1.6 million teenage school students from across 146 countries are doing in meeting the World Health Organization’s minimum physical activity recommendations – a minimum of one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day.
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It shows that Australian teenagers are among the least physically active on the planet, ranking 140 out of the 146 countries studied. While Australia may be consumed by sport, consumption clearly doesn’t mean participation.
Drilling down into the statistics at state level and, although two out of three school kids participate in an organized sport in the early teenage years, by their late teens it is less than one in three. Moreover, the drop - off in sports participation among girls is steeper than among boys.
The “premature elitism” of sport for Australian children – the AFL draft is now dominated by players from elite private schools – may be a factor in the fall off in teenage participation numbers, as is the relentless growth of competitive computer gaming or esports.
Sporting bodies rely on a social license to operate, which means we largely trust them to regulate their sport as they see fit. Picture: Shutterstock
But it also raises questions over the social license to operate that sports bodies enjoy. That license means sports bodies are trusted to regulate their sport, with government oversight and public approval, in the manner they see fit. And yet, what is the point of sport, other than it becoming part of the entertainment industry, if its core participation numbers among the young are as hollow as described?
Following a year like 2019, in which sporting controversies, including animal welfare in horse racing, extended to the courts of law and public opinion, it is worth asking how strong that social license actually is? And if that social license is in doubt, might sporting bodies be facing even greater regulatory or legal oversight?
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As ever with international sport, what is really at issue are not principles of law but high politics. Notwithstanding the outcome of Russia’s appeal at CAS, the IOC under its charter (article 44.3) reserves the right to invite athletes to its Games and therefore if the IOC has the will to do so, it could impose a blanket ban on Russia in 2020.
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