Lifestyle sports delivery and sustainability: clubs, communities and user-managers

Abstract

Lifestyle and informal sports have been recognised by policy makers as offering opportunities to increase participation in physical activity, particularly amongst hard to reach groups. Lifestyle sports are, however, double edged in their potential to achieve these goals. Their playful and non-traditional features may attract new participants less interested in traditional sports but the very liquidity of these activities may mean that the engagement of participants is fragmented and not sustained beyond a particular period in their lives. This paper presents the perspective of mountain biking user-managers; those involved in the delivery, clubs and communities of mountain bikers across the UK. Findings suggest that whilst lifestyle sport communities are dependent on the work of formalised clubs to gain access to the funding and resources they need to sustain their activities, core participants will not always want to have to liaise or become involved formally within a club structure. In addition clubs will not succeed in delivering sustained activities in line with sport policy to increase and maintain participation by relying on individual grants and without the support of an active informal user community. Accounts highlight the 2 importance of engaging informal user communities with a sense of ownership such as locals to ensure new participants are integrated and the community is able to replenish.

Exploring Critical Alternatives for Youth Development through Lifestyle Sport: Surfing and Community Development in Aotearoa/New Zealand

“…Although research is limited, there is some evidence to suggest that lifestyle/action sport projects, particularly in parkour and skateboarding, are successfully engaging young people and beginning to address issues of community-engagement, creativity and healthy lifestyles in new meaningful ways [7,13,19,24,41,44,45,51]. Over the last decade, surfing has emerged as a lifestyle and action sport context in which a range of initiatives have been piloted [13,38,[52][53][54][55], addressing issues from mental health [54], active ageing [55], at risk young people [13,43], the well-being of indigenous populations [14], and the inclusion of women and girls [22,56].…”

A Study on the Relationship between Urban Residents’ Perception of Recreational Sports and Their Participation in Recreational Sports: Based on Gender Differences

“…For example, the internet, interactive tools, and social media play crucial roles in the development of sports RS companies. By studying the lifestyle sports delivery and sustainability, King found out that lifestyle sport communities depend on the work of clubs to gain access to funding and resources [14].…”

“…Haudenhuyse proved that less formal and more flexible activities were beneficial for socially vulnerable youth [16]. King and Church pointed out that lifestyle and informal sports may offer opportunities to attract new participants who may be less interested in traditional sports [14].…”

Challenges for sport organisations developing and delivering non‐traditional social sport products for insufficiently active populations

“…The aims of the SSP and RSP align with previous calls for policy makers to view informal sports as an opportunity to encourage new user groups to engage in sport and physical activity, 9 and to respond to shifting physical activity participation trends in Australia. These trends, which are also evident internationally, 11,12 have included stagnant or declining participation in many organised and team sports alongside a growth in informal and lifestyle sport and physical activity participation 13–15 .…”

“…At a state level, the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), a statutory authority focused on promoting good health and preventing chronic disease, has a strategic imperative to get 300,000 more Victorians engaging in physical activity by 2023 8 . Between 2015 and 2018, VicHealth endeavoured to encourage the engagement of new participants not interested or able to participate in traditional sports 9 by investing in two programs – the State Sport Program (SSP) and the Regional Sport Program (RSP) – to facilitate the development of new sport products or scale their existing, flexible, non‐traditional social sport products to target insufficiently active members of the community. For the purposes of their program work with sports organisations, and to aid communication with the general public, VicHealth also divided those classified as insufficiently active into ‘somewhat active’ and ‘inactive’ 10…”