ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to trace shifts in the stated purpose of sport policy following the awarding of the 2012 Olympic Games to London and to introduce the concept of a 'big sporting society'. This will be theorized within a conceptual framework of three generations of human rights, involving comprehensive sporting rights and resulting in big sporting democracy. The 'sport for sport's sake' policy purpose rests on the implicit assumption that sport can be considered to have an interest of its own, internal goods and intrinsic value. Sport for social good, which was the policy purpose of early New Labour in relation to an overarching social inclusion agenda, has been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere in the sport policy literature. Although the language of the 'big society' may be that of the community and the citizen, the likely result within one of the most unequal 'developed' or rich societies, will be a hierarchical relationship of 'citizens', minimally defined, as individuals and consumers.
