the return to sport is a chance to focus on health, not just competition

By: Professor Hans Westerbeek and Professor Rochelle Eime

The disruption to community and professional sport is among the most deeply felt casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic. Business models that were once considered untouchable and perennially healthy were exposed as utterly vulnerable when forced to shut down overnight.

Without weekly competition and development activities in community sport, cash flow from player memberships and registration fees quickly evaporated. In professional sport, there was no business without players, paying spectators, and media to report on the game.

At the same time that we’ve been restricted from regular sporting activities, Australia’s overriding government and health messages urged us to remain physically active, with exercise being one of only four reasons to leave the house during stage four isolation.

This reinforces a focus that health promotion experts have long waited for politicians to support: that physical activity is a public health priority that can combat the chronic diseases now crippling our health systems.
Many Australians already accept this. Never before have so many people longed for the days when our parks and sporting fields could be used at will, with more families and individuals than ever engaged in walking, running, cycling or park fitness during forced isolation.

The pandemic has revealed that physical activity and sport are vital to tired, anxious, impatient and stressed individuals and communities as we emerge from lockdown. Sport is now in the best position it has ever been in to claim a fundamental place in society.

But how will sport return? What are the risks, rewards, opportunities and challenges inherent in this transformation?

Restarting sport requires a staged approach

The Australian Institute of Sport has developed a pragmatic Framework for Rebooting Sport in a COVID-19 Environment that details how organised sports can restart operations. It recommends a staged approach (Levels A, B and C) where every level requires risk assessment management, an analysis of safe environments, and participant education.

Community sports clubs, largely run by volunteers and parents, have the capacity to get participants quickly back to training and informal competition. They will likely be the first to return to a base level of operation without requiring massive funding injections.

Meanwhile, researchers at Victoria University, Federation University and Flinders University are surveying thousands of Australians about their physical, mental and social health before, during and after social-distancing

measures. This study aims to provide further scientific evidence about the importance of sport and physical activity, and is a unique opportunity to show what happens when active sports participants are forced out of their sport.

With nearly 5000 study participants already, early signs are that a significant number of people report that their general physical and mental health is somewhat worse than a year ago. A majority say that socialising and playing with friends is key to their enjoyment of sport, and much more important than winning.
This suggests that clubs that return to the core business of community sport – to play, to socialise and to connect the community – will thrive and outperform clubs and associations that focus on performance, premierships and player payments.

Government, but also the health insurance and education sectors, can use this opportunity to realise the value that sport delivers to their own businesses. Resilient communities, lower health costs, and higher education and job outcomes resulting from physical activity may stimulate structural investment.
Perhaps we will see government taking over some roles now held by sport governing bodies to ensure community sport delivery can be safeguarded from further external shocks.

Elite or professional sports will have their own challenges as they return. The AFL’s current debate about the size of player lists, and the need for extensive specialist football coaches, trainers and back-office administrators, will be the same debate taking place in other professional leagues. Lean, mean and agile may well become the key concepts for professional sport to transform towards a new business model.

As social-distancing measures are relaxed, individuals and communities will return to sport to build not just their health and wellbeing, but resilience and resistance. As with any good crisis, professional and community sport should not waste this opportunity to include a ‘new’ focus on health that has been largely neglected at the expense of promoting highly paid star players or striving for premiership flags.

Time will tell which sports can ride this wave and which drop off. This will partly be based on sports’ governing boards and executive managers, but also on the particular structure and format of individual sports.

In the short term, which sports survive may well depend on how easy they are to play within a new social and economic environment, including if they offer scope for social distancing. These sports may well be the ones that rise to prominence and demonstrate they are most fail-proof in times of disruptive crisis.

Professors Hans Westerbeek and Rochelle Eime are researchers at Victoria University. In partnership with the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, Sport Australia, and the Australian Institute of Sport, VU will host the fifth National Sport Integrity Forum on 26 May on the Zoom platform and live-streamed on Facebook. The theme for this year’s forum is 'Return to Sport: Risks, Rewards, Opportunities and Challenges'.