ABSTRACT
Sports development is a key component of contemporary British sport. The sports development system, based around central government policy and local authorities’ application of it, influences every aspect of sport, from the hosting of the Olympic Games through to the provision of exercise classes for the elderly. The system is a channel through which governments target social, economic, and cultural problems. Sport has many features that make it attractive to the state for such ends. For example, it can help to promote social cohesion, particularly in multicultural communities. It can provide a place for the dispersal of excess energy, particularly amongst young males, that might otherwise be directed into anti-social or criminal activity. It can promote good health and thus help to reduce the costs that sickness causes to the economy. Sport can also help to generate economic activity, through hosting events, building infrastructure, and sports tourism. These and other classic functionalist readings of sport give it an appeal to governments, and sports development is central to governments’ attempts to reach these objectives. (See Jarvie 2006: 17–41 for an overview of key social theories.) Anyone with a professional or academic interest in contemporary British sport needs to look at sports development critically, and to appreciate its political and ideological nature (Hylton et al. 2001; Houlihan and White 2002; Green and Houlihan 2005).
