UP508 What's Sport Selling? Hollingsworth on the state of the nation's health, flags, needles, government and the free market

0:00Hi there, Richard Gillis here. Welcome to Unofficial Partner, the Sports Business Conversation. Our guest today is Tim Hollingsworth, who recently stepped down after eight years as Chief Executive Officer of Sport England, which put him in charge of the country's£300 million annual sports budget, which then gets allocated to the governing bodies and various other places as well. So what did he achieve? What would he do differently? and what is the state of sport and the governing bodies in England today in 2025 you can hear the full conversation here it goes in lots of interesting different directions as you would expect very reflective but also he's asking some very good questions he's been in those rooms where decisions get made and sport meets government so well worth your time this is the fourth and final episode of a series that we've been running in collaboration with Red Torch under the title of What's Sport Selling?

0:55Over the past three episodes, we've explored how sport can drive meaningful social impact, tackle the global physical inactivity crisis, and unlock powerful business opportunities for the industry. And this conversation really does bring all of those themes together. If you'd like to learn more about Red Torch, the independent research and creative agency dedicated to making sport more relevant, visit redtorch.sport. And we thank them for their support. Much appreciated. And what has been a really interesting and broad series, I'll put the other podcast in the series in the show notes and the newsletter.

1:31If you don't already and you listen to this and are interested in the stuff that we talk about, I would point you towards Substack and the Unofficial Partner newsletter. I put a link in there for you, too. If you don't already do that, lots and lots of people do. Probably the people that are in your office as you look around. And anyway, thanks for your time. It's much appreciated as ever.

1:57Tim Hollingsworth:Hopefully I'll still be clear headed, but I hope it doesn't sound too bad. I think there's a certain gravitas. I've just had a LEMP sip and, you know, that is the cure for all ills, isn't it? So there we go. Anyway, this is great. Thank you. This is a toe dipped back in the water for me of speaking out loud. So I'm fascinated by the job and you're just off out the back of it. And I want to sort of brain dump from you in terms of what you thought going in, what actually happened and then what you're thinking now. And we'll get into some specifics that I know we want to get into. But first of all, let's assume that we don't know what Sport England does and just start from there.

2:45just a very quick because i always see it and i'm very conscious that sometimes i get it wrong in terms of its remit or i sort of misunderstand it or blame it for the wrong things or credit it with the wrong things and all of those things so yeah just give us a sense because you're you know out the back end of it so what yes what was the job basically what did you do all day that's such a

3:09Tim Hollingsworth:good question the job of being chief executive sporting land is leading the sports council that government has for grassroots community sport and physical activity. And in doing that, there was an obligation fundamentally to do two things. One was to be the policy stewarding lead organisation for government in terms of sports across England, in terms of how it is delivered, the organisations that are involved, and the effectiveness and also the integrity of that agenda. and then on the other was much more about can we as an organization help to shape a greater level of focus and improvement on the activity levels of the nation and actually can at heart Sport England be an organization that enables more people to move in their everyday lives and consequently have the physical mental and social benefits that that brings because one of the things that many people confuse is that that also involves sort of elite and world-class success and olympic and paralympic investment and for reasons of devolution that's always sat with uk sport as a uk body um but actually the strategic ambition of sporting linen the thing that i helped to set is that we could be and should be far more deliberate in our investment trying to tackle the inequalities that have historically existed in activity and get the nation moving more so it's that link i'm interested in between sport and government and what sport looks like when it goes in the door and we've obviously had tracy crouch on you've been on before yeah you know when you're in post but just step back give me a sense of what that conversation is like and what the sort of assumptions of someone like me might have about what sport how that plays and how it really does.

5:02Tim Hollingsworth:So it was Tony Blair that said out loud, this government just doesn't have a sport policy. Sport is also a health policy, an education policy, a justice policy. And we've never quite achieved that ambition and goal, even if it was set. In reality, there is a home department for sport, as there is for every bit of society in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. There is a sport minister, there's a secretary of state. There is a whole team of officials responsible for it. And that ranges across the whole of what we would consider to be the sport landscape. So at one end, it's about the bidding for events and mega events and World Cups and Olympic and Paralympic Games through to World Championships.

5:42Tim Hollingsworth:It's the facilities base. It's the investment into community and grassroots. It's the understanding of the legislative and regulatory agenda that surrounds sport. and fundamentally you're in a position where you've got a department who is seeking to drive all of that but actually some of the levers that it needs to pull if it's going to be successful sit outside of that department so that would be my principal reflection is that when people talk about cross-government working and the ability to genuinely influence policy you recognize that sport england as a as an arm's length body of the dcms has a huge amount of insight and I would argue alongside the other home country sports councils and so many other organisations knowledge and experience of actually how to do this but the barriers that are faced aren't held just by the DCMS they're held elsewhere and unless we can actually create an environment within government where that's understood we'll always have quite a narrow definition of sporting government I think which is you know put simply how our national and international teams doing on the world stage and how well do we see in each MP's constituency, how well do they see their clubs doing?

6:58So is it like a sort of, is it a microcosm of the, is it the machinery of government, which is a phrase that quite often comes back and people as a sort of implied criticism of the civil service or just the way in which things get stuck, they go, you know, ideas and good people go into government and it just wears them down and the process. Is there something in it about that or is it just in terms of you said that the sport just doesn't have a big enough

7:27Tim Hollingsworth:canvas doesn't have a big enough canvas within government i would say actually to to draw on and you know i've i've got a favorite statistic from my time at sport england because one of the things that was always rightly argued was that sport could play a huge role in the health of the nation is that it's the it's the starting point for so many people's sort of presumption around why you might invest in in sport fiscal activity so you know to have a healthier happier nation physical and mental well-being being at the center of of that and yet the annual budget that sport england controlled which was together taking the exchequer government money and lottery money was give or take 300 billion pounds a year which equates to 14 hours of the nhs budget so the inequality if you like of the presumption of influence is is writ large in that but you've got a scenario where sport is being seen as being the answer to an awful lot of the challenges and the problems that we can face in society but there's a there isn't the there isn't the the ability to then properly access and engage in not just the resources but the sort of policy agenda that sits across health that sits across education that sits across one of the most important departments for sport is a department for communities, housing and local government, because that department sets the tone for local authorities, sets the budget for local authorities, sets the planning rules, which have been, you know, very much a topic of conversation this year.

8:57Tim Hollingsworth:All the things where you talk about, well, why aren't we doing better with our facilities? Why aren't there more swimming pools? Or why is it so difficult for a club to, you know, to get its pitch agreed. Well, this is because the levers for that aren't controlled by sport, and yet sport depends on them. So one of the things I would argue is that it's not so much the inertia of government, it's more the lack of canvas being presented. You know, if it was more, you know, one of the things I think when we were sort of having a chat and we said, well, if you're sports minister for a day, I'm not sure you could do a huge amount, to be quite honest with you but if you could spend your day genuinely seeking as i know the sports minister seeks to do to get the rest of government to understand the value of what we as a sector can contribute that would be more powerful than more of the same within sport so one thing i was thinking about is this a british problem is this something this is across the board is it i mean people always go to Scandinavia and we all love Scandinavian countries and we love the you know the stories that link they seem to have solved a bit of this problem but so this isn't just about us and our government this is a problem it's everybody has their own version of it I mean one of the reasons one of the ways genuinely where we're ahead in this country I think there's probably two things you could point to one is unquestionably the definition of what it takes to win at an elite level.

10:30Tim Hollingsworth:I mean, you know, we might consider our teams to not necessarily be as successful as we would want them to be, but I think we do fantastically well if you include Olympic and Paralympic success. And I think the last 20 years of that focus from primarily those involved in the high performance system and organisations like UK Sport who invest and fund in it, but also drive that strategy, we're globally recognised as a nation that understands what it takes to win. And I think that that is a massive, significant part too. And there will always be examples of where, you know, it's not quite as apparent.

11:07Tim Hollingsworth:But if you do look at our historic performance across the last five, six Olympic and Paralympic Games alone, you know, that's substantially punching above our weight relative to many other nations. Sorry, Tim. And the question there is, so that's the trickle down argument, isn't it? Yeah, but I will come on to that. I'm sure I don't subscribe very much to that for reasons I can't come on to. But I'm punching above our weight in that context. But the other thing is, and this is very much more where my time within Sports England has been spent, has been recognising that actually, if you're going to create a sporting system, you need to think about it holistically rather than about the individual organisations.

11:50Tim Hollingsworth:You need to think about the overall mix of what it takes to get people to be active. And a lot of that is about not only giving them the opportunity, but also making sure that there is a genuinely welcoming, inclusive environment for people to take part in. And then thirdly, it's really, really critical that we recognise that not everyone wants to follow the most traditional routes. And part of the other bit of this debate that's wrapped up in it all is, you know, how does sport present itself in this day and age? How do you actually make it as relevant to people's lives as perhaps it once was?

12:25Tim Hollingsworth:And are we doing a good enough job of acknowledging where the inequalities exist and prioritising investments into those areas so that people who previously felt like it wasn't for them? You know, in the last week, we've seen the latest iteration of Sport England's This Girl Can campaign. That was fundamentally driven by that agenda, which is that there was no messaging for those women and girls who felt like being active, playing sport in their everyday life was for them. And actually what we've sought to do with that campaign and the work that goes on the back of it is to challenge that and to change that.

12:59Tim Hollingsworth:So I think there are two things that we do really well, actually, as a nation. But what I think we have struggled with is the preciseness of the purpose of sport in society and why it is that we might invest in it or invest in it more. OK, so a few things there, just bouncing off that. So there's a there's the list. I mean, I mentioned trickle down. So the medals question and which, again, you know, we've talked about in the past. I don't want to spend too long on it, but from all what you're saying, and people get confused, I get confused about what's the role of gold medals? Why are we spending so much?

13:37You know, does it matter? And actually, does it matter that we're in the top three in a medal table at an Olympics? We get a moment of national pride. I'm separating Paralympics from this because I think that's a different argument. Let's just focus on Olympics. I think that's something that I've, you know, what is the role? Does that trickle down to participation? And that's the question. In which case, if it doesn't, why are we spending so much money on major events? Why do we spend so much? Why has so much over 25 years, you know, been channeled to performance institutions and all of the rest of it?

14:15Just give me your base on that.

14:18Tim Hollingsworth:Well, first of all, I'd argue not that much has actually in relative terms. I mean, it seems like a lot in isolation. But if you actually look across not just government funding, but actually just the general, you know, where we see money going, I don't think over that period the amount spent have been so massive relative to other areas of society. And certainly, whilst I'm not making an argument against this, if you look at what's spent, for example, across other parts of DCMS and the arts, It's a relative investment for a significant return. So there's a bit of an argument there that says, you know, it's an easy tip to say, oh, we invest all this money in Olympic and Panopics success.

14:57Tim Hollingsworth:Actually, it's not a huge amount relative to so much of what other government spending goes on. Secondly, of course, there is a relationship. Otherwise, it would be barmy. But there is not the primary purpose for me of success in a high performance context has never felt like it should be that it would automatically lead to inspiration, to participation, because there are so many other factors that dictate whether somebody or not wants to get involved in playing a sport. what there is is two things that we should not undervalue there is a part to part to this which has been playing out in other contexts in society very real over the last few days is national identity and national pride and actually i don't think we should underestimate that i think it's a very positive manifestation of how we see ourselves as a nation when we see our teams doing well winning and our athletes succeeding on the world stage.

15:53Tim Hollingsworth:I think second also, there is a, let's call it joy. There's a joy in that success that is, you know, really important. I think the, whether it's thousands of pints of beer being thrown up in the air when a goal scored in, you know, in Box Park or wherever, or far more fundamentally, whether it's just a constant jeopardy of your team that you might follow or an athlete that you might follow. And that moment of success brings or indeed the moment of failure brings feelings that don't actually manifest themselves in society that often otherwise. So these things to me matter just as much as the idea that because we've got a successful canoeist, lots more people are going to take on canoeing.

16:35Tim Hollingsworth:I don't think that's the argument. I think the argument is there is a validity to high performance success that is really powerful in terms of how it makes us feel and how it makes us engage in our society. And then there can be examples and there always will be, of where successfully that has led to some form of increase in interest and participation. And the two examples I would always give, one is actually within Paralympic context in London 2012, there was an uplift in Paralympic sports because disabled people became more aware of the opportunity that previously there hadn't been. And you can see a similar pattern in women's and particularly girls football, where the success of the lionesses has has manifestly created awareness and understanding and the opportunity.

17:21Tim Hollingsworth:And there you can see a trickle down. But the principal purpose for me of high performance investment is to make it an incredibly valid investment in our sense of identity and self well being and joy. And I think those things are hugely powerful in and of themselves. What do you think of when you see the national flag, the Union Jack or the flag of St George? Well, I wore the Union Jack on my sleeve quite literally for seven years at Paralympics GB. And I saw, I'm delighted to say, particularly in the summer games, lots of Union Jacks being run up flagpoles and athletes on podiums. And I feel that my sense of Britishness is a very important part of my identity.

18:04Tim Hollingsworth:And I say deliberately Britishness first, that I enjoy and feel in that context because it feels like a warm and welcoming and positive environment that's created. And I think sport can do that. However, I also, you know, worry about how, I mean, we're not going to get into too much of this, I'm sure, but how that, you know, the flags that should be, I don't think it's sport's job to determine what a flag's purpose is. And I find a discomfort in some of the way in which identity is created through the waving of flags. But I don't see that in a sporting context, because there you're very clearly putting a nationality front and centre when you're competing.

18:48It's almost entirely driven by context, isn't it?

18:50Tim Hollingsworth:Yeah, that's a much better way of putting it. Context is all. And I think that for me, as I say, I felt very proud to be British because I felt I was representing my nationality in an environment that felt hugely positive. And that perhaps is one of the lessons learned from sport. But equally, we can see, you know, I have always recognised and known that nationality and identity is personal before it's collective. But we tried to create a sort of collective sense of well-being when it comes to sport. I remember London 2012, and you'll remember this very well, you know, better than I do. But that the flags, I took my daughter to and we were waving Union Jacks.

19:37And that the debate around that time was taking the flag back from extremists. That was, you know, part of the conversation. And then there was a moment and it was a Twitter moment, which again dates this because it's London 2012. And I can't remember who it was, but it was a it was a sort of Tory MP at the opening ceremony saying, oh, yeah, it's multicultural rubbish.

20:00Tim Hollingsworth:Yeah. And the level of sort of vitriol back towards that statement was really interesting. And people were, you know, that was a sort of isolated voice. I look back at that time now, it's like a sort of from a perspective of just the multicultural question in terms of how that debate has moved and how quickly. and all the things that I took for granted are now being sort of questioned and the attacks on diversity and inclusion and all of these things. What role does that play? Where does that bit of the conversation play in when it gets to funding, when it gets to into government? And does that change government by government?

20:39Does it alter left and right? Or is it a fairly consistent?

20:43Tim Hollingsworth:The second part of that's much easier to answer. It's pretty consistent, actually. I mean, there is a perspective on what money is there to buy, of course, and government money is there to buy. But fundamentally, I've been in and around government policy for 20 years, it hasn't significantly shifted away from a belief, where I think it has become more aligned in the last decade, is around outcomes, what's the purpose. And both, both, you know, governments of recent Hughes have seen sport and getting people physically active as having a greater outcome-led focus to it in terms of the mental and physical health and well-being of our population, but also the opportunity for greater social identity and cohesion.

21:31Tim Hollingsworth:So the second part of your question is quite easy to answer, which is I actually think, broadly speaking, whilst you can see distinction and you can see a varying focus in and around priorities, fundamentally sports policies have not shifted massively across governments. But I think the first half of the answer is really, really hard, which is to what extent do we oblige sport to play a bigger role than it does in creating a sort of harmony and the well-being in society that we're seeking to find? You're quite right. everybody who had the privilege of being in and around London 2012 and whether that was you know even even as it was broadcast let alone actually being physically there it felt like a very inclusive environment without that seemingly being a difficult word to say it wasn't a difficult word to say it was very you know it was a genuinely inclusive environment people felt party to it they felt they had now it would be a woke celebration you know a festival of wokeness potentially but certainly there would be for me a much greater focus perhaps on the you know what how are we presenting ourselves to the world I mean again I have a very strong view which is probably a minority view that I despair of people who think that we didn't you know sort of create sufficient legacy out of London 2012.

22:55Tim Hollingsworth:London 2012 created a different perspective for the sporting landscape. It created a much greater focus on the professionalisation of organisations. It created a huge amount of focus on the role of sport in society. It created a massive amount of interest in sports facilities and hosting events and things that have maintained themselves over the years. What it couldn't do was, you know, the two things that people blame it for. One was not change society and to ultimately drive participation levels to a greater level of increase because it wasn't its job but but where we failed a little bit in terms of creating impact on the latter point is to understand how legacy works for a major event you asked about major events they are very powerful tools to creating legacy you've just got to be really really clear what you expect that legacy to be and i you know that again i'm someone who sort of probably over index on questioning major events.

23:54I mean, your point there about the intangible of the sort of national brand question, I think is really underrated. I think, you know, I sort of, I agree with you. I was nodding as you said that. I quite often go to, you know, you get into soft versus hard outcomes and you say, oh, Stratford is, you know, nicer than it was. And likewise, the participation question. I think one of the, I always think that there is an over promise in the bidding process of major events, which leads people to, you know, there's a sort of quite a substantial mission creep into other loads of areas. And, you know, and I, I think that's inherent in sport because people project onto it and Tracy Crouch, who was on here saying there's no, so there's no problem.

24:40That sport is not the solution to, which if you start from that perspective, I've got a lot of sympathy for that view, But immediately everyone's projecting onto it their hobby horse. And if it doesn't work, then there's disappointment baked into the process.

24:54Tim Hollingsworth:That's probably my principal reflection. Now that I no longer have to wake up in the morning and worry about, you know, sporting and doing the best job it can. And there's a fantastic successor in place and brilliant people there still delivering. But that was the point. Tracey's point is right, is that there are so many. It goes back to that Tony Blair quote I gave when we started chatting. There are so many ways that you can see the role that sport could play in helping to solve problems that we face. But you can't catalyse that through the traditional sports sector alone. You need to get, I mean, schools and young people, I think there is a massive, we're all very familiar with the debate around the mental health of our young people.

25:40Tim Hollingsworth:but unless schools actually genuinely understand the benefit to mental health of inclusion of involvement in sport of making it fun and enjoyable for everybody of creating active days in school that are much more focused around getting kids moving than you know defining it through organized formalized activity for a certain amount of hours per week of actually thinking of ways of which the really which my old boss Chris Boardman was so focused on actually a really critical part of the school day is the journey to and from school particularly in primary and getting that making it as easy as possible for people to walk or cycle and as hard as possible for people to drive but that's not DCMS so these are all the areas where you know Tracy's bang on but we need to be therefore creating the environments to enable that to happen and you know we are still still the biggest investor in sport and physical activity in this country is local government and we rely still on the facilities that local authorities provide but we know how denuded they're becoming of those resources so when people say oh why aren't more people swimming surely swim england are failing well actually where are the pools how are we keeping them going you know how do they survive the energy crisis and covid and they're they're a crumbling stop and we can't we can't just assume that the answer is through a sport lens it's through that lens of how do we as a society create the opportunity and the canvas for sport to play its part and then you can get on to are we doing it well so let's get to a bit more specifics then in terms of sport england is giving money or you know allocates money to the national governing bodies as part of you know it's it's many many other organizations as well okay so let's talk about incentives perverse incentives yeah does that process work it feels to me sometimes i think think that there's an attribution question in terms of you know it's a bit of a boring accounting thing but if you set an incentive for it's still about tennis and paddle or swimming and wild swimming or whatever they are every governing body is looking at okay they're not doing our sport in the right way but we do have to then sort of count them in our numbers because that's how we're going to get rewarded it's a question of attribution absolutely i so So one of the reasons why I smiled when you started down that route is that I think that's a disproved model for creating greater levels of participation.

28:07Tim Hollingsworth:And I think every governing body would agree. Every governing body CEO would agree. The principal role, I think, in sport, before you get to anything else, is the G of national governing body. It's the governing of the sport. Actually, that's so vital. It's, you know, and the role of a CEO now, and yes, of course, we can look at the very big governing bodies and the huge impact and scale of a football association or, you know, or the ECB or whoever. But, you know, if you're running archery GB or canoeing or GB wrestling or, you know, you're in an organisation where you have a membership base to service and satisfy.

28:47Tim Hollingsworth:you've got societal pressures on you that are you know creating much more expectations than were previously the case about how people behave how coaches behave where organizations actually go and actually create their offer they've definitely got to make sure that the rules are adhered to they've got to make sure that there is you know somebody one of the CEOs that I spoke to about this not long ago described it as caseload it's almost like they're permanently dealing with the caseload there's permanently challenges within the sporting environment often created by societal pressures, those governing bodies, they're obliged to seek to fix.

29:24So let's just pause on that for a minute because I think that's an interesting point. So the alternative is to say, right, yes, there's always the G word, and we've had lots of people on the podcast who are running governing bodies. It will take all of that every day of every week on that subject. Now, an alternative then, and it would be to remove everything else, give them that job, and let the market decide on everything else. So if people are doing, want to play art, do archery, if they want to do swimming, they want to do, then the private sector will soak up and create interesting things for them to do.

29:58And actually the presence of the governing bodies are crowding out private enterprise. This is a market first approach. And we would say, right, of course, private equity, investors, they never talk about governance. They never want to talk about safeguarding. they always want to talk about the entertainment product they want to talk about the market let them get on with it some will win some will fail some will be park run some will be crossfit others will fail but it doesn't matter because we're all everyone's moving because they're better at that than governing bodies and governing bodies are instinctively defend you know sort of they're not as good as the marketplace in terms of doing that so you're And Sport England's, the problem with the model is that you're picking winners rather than allowing the market to flourish.