Ideas@TheCentre
For the love of gold, let’s find a better way to fund sport
Australian’s sports fans tend to be a very one-eyed bunch – while we all have our favourite sports and sports personalities, generally Australians will watch any sport where ‘we’ might do well.
Many Australians (including me) watched increasing amounts of the 2011 Tour de France as it became clear Cadel Evans had a chance of winning, despite Le Tour being four hours a day of French picture postcards (plus Gabriel Gaté) with 15 minutes of sport at the end – all of which happens at insanity o’clock in the depths of winter.
Unfortunately, when Australians are losing there is often a flurry of recriminations – usually coupled with demands for even greater budgets for sport. Right on cue, officials are blaming insufficient government funding as the difference between silver and gold in London.
Rather than lining up more athletes to suckle on the government teat, why don’t we look at innovative new funding models for sport that are largely unexplored in this country?
Direct funding models, especially web based micro funding models, are an untapped resource in Australia. New creative projects (especially computer games) have been funded through websites like Kickstarter, and web-based communities have had success in funding sports teams overseas (like My Football Club, a group initially numbering 50,000, who each paid a nominal fee to become joint owners of UK football club Ebbsfleet United).
It may not seem like much but if just half of the 2.5 million people who watched the Olympics every night contributed $10 a year between now and the next Olympics, they could increase the total funding for the Olympic team by 15%.
Another way of raising revenue is through reality TV. A reality show about Australia’s leading female swimmers – the drama of competition, the sacrifices and loneliness of training, injuries, and of course, dating – might even appeal to new demographics (reality TV’s primary market is teenage girls, traditionally not the strongest consumers of sport).
After all, narrated footage of university research on meerkats averaged more than 1 million US viewers in its first season and became a worldwide hit. A sporting reality show couldn’t be worse than The Shire.
There are plenty of other ways to fund sport too, from a HECS-like scheme to targeted profit sharing from merchandising. Sport doesn’t need to join the ranks of the rent seekers. I’d be willing to give them $10 from my pocket if they stopped taking $2 from my (our) taxes.
Simon Cowan is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
