ABSTRACT
There are many definitions of sports development, reflecting the past and current mix of objectives of the various principal agents involved and the changing political, economic, ideological and cultural background in which they operated. These definitions can all be positioned along two axes: first, the axis between encouraging people to become physically active on the one hand (sport for all) and producing elite athletes through talent development on the other (elite sport); and second, the axis between creating the pathways and structures to enable people to participate and perform in sport on the one hand (development of sport) and using sport as a vehicle to achieve non-sport policy goals on the other (development through sport) (Houlihan and White 2002). In assessing the impact of sports development on sports participation, this chapter focuses on a specific part of the space created by these two axes. While Chapter 40 concentrated on the development through sport, this chapter will focus on the development of sport; and contrary to the previous chapter, which explored the impact of sports development on elite sport, this chapter will tackle its impact on sports participation. For several reasons this impact of sports development on sports participation is difficult to
assess. In the first place, both the terms ‘sports development’ and ‘sports participation’ are by no means constants but historically fluid and socially contextual in their meaning (Houlihan and White 2002; Van Bottenburg et al. 2005; Bloyce and Smith 2010). It cannot be expected, therefore, to create a uniform model to determine the impact of sports development on sports participation which is valid throughout the world. In the second place, the analysis is limited in establishing the extent to which this impact varies from country to country, because analyses of sports development – let alone its relationship with sports participation – are still lacking in many (especially non-Western) countries. This chapter will be confined to (mostly English) secondary literature published about sports development and sports participation in a limited number of (mostly Western) countries. In the third place, even in those countries where both sports development and sports participation have been richly documented, the impact of the former on the latter is hard to assess because sports development policies are increasingly interwoven with other policy areas and often made in a variety of institutional settings at multiple levels of government and within a mix of public, not-for-profit and commercial organizations (Bergsgard et al. 2007).
