The Impact of Compulsory Competitive Tendering on the Sports Policy of the UK

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The Impact of Compulsory Competitive Tendering on the Sports Policy of the UK

Hello everyone! Today I will be presenting on the topic 'The impact of compulsory competitive

tendering in the UK'.

Before going to the actual topic, I would first like to discuss the background related to sports and

politics. The world's government didn't influence their country's sports until the 19th century,

with sports governing bodies autonomous for their decisions. My topic is related to the UK's

sports policy, and I find it necessary to discuss with you when the politics of the UK started

interfering in sports. Politics in sports dates back to the 19th century when the UK government

started having full control over sports policies, regulations, decisions, fundings, and resources.

Government decisions directly influence sports, which resulted in disputes, biased decisions, and

danger to social stability in the country. The central council of recreative and physical training

was the first government sports governing body representing a large number of national

governing bodies (NVBs) and other sports representatives. The decision-making shifted to the

government to use sports as a source of social wellbeing and interaction among citizens. By the

end of the 19th century, the UK's sports were governed by the government with decision-making

authority, finances, and resource allocation in government representatives' hands. This

involvement helped in using sports for citizens' wellbeing with equal opportunities to all and fair

decision-making. Sports was used for health, poverty, and to cure other social evils in the UK.

With the increase in the population and social challenges, the government announced

Compulsory competitive tendering for sports governance.

CCT is the privatization of sectors by public entities. It is to divide the pressure on the

government for better handling of a particular sector and to ensure the quality of work. CCT was

launched in the UK's sports sector in the late 19th century so that the sports federation can be
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well managed and more sports opportunities with better quality are available for every citizen.

The purpose was to divide the responsibilities to the grass-roots level and ensure more and more

opportunities for individuals and fight social evil for upbringing social prosperity in the UK.

However, To a certain extent , sports rules and regulation are still in the hands of the UK

government and government federations. Resources, including financial resources, are also given

to private organizations by the government to keep an accountability check on the private

federations.

next, I would like to explain the structure of sports briefly in the UK. The structure of sports in

the UK is divided into three entities; governmental structures, Intermediate structures, and non-

governmental structures. Governmental structures include those federations that are under the

government, which includes BOWLS England etc. Since these are government entities, they are

only accountable to citizens and are independent for decision making, keeping in mind the aim of

sports set by the government. The fundings are given to government federations, which then

distributes them to intermediates and non-governmental authorities. These federations are

responsible for rules set in the UK sport. They are responsible for keeping an eye on all the other

non-governmental federations in the UK by looking at their work, investments, and profit

margin. Intermediaries structures include those that are neither public nor private federations. An

example of it is Volleyball England. It is somehow independent for decision making but needs

approval from the governmental structures. The funding of intermediaries is by the government.

The third type is the non-governmental structures. These are private federations that do decision-

making on their own and arrange a large number of their fundings. They are less accountable to

the government and gets a limited amount as a name of funding from the government. However,

all the federations need to abide by the policies set by the government of the UK.
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Slide 6 is the diagra/mmatical view of the sports structure in the UK. After CCT, the power to a

some extent has been transferred to the regional and local authorities by the UK's government.

There certainly is a reason why governments and other agencies participate in sports. This is

presented in the next slide. The main reason is social prosperity in society. To make sports

available to all with equal quality and opportunity, governments and other agencies participate in

ensuring all the citizens have an active number of sports participation options. Elimination of

poverty is the other reason why governments and agencies participate in sports. By arranging

large sporting events and incentives for participation and playing sports, poverty can be

minimized. Also, sports and extracurricular activities help in improving the health of citizens.

For citizens' better health and to keep them active, governments and agencies provide sports

opportunities from citizeren’s childhood so that the population is physically active. Another

reason is to control sports and private federations for not shifting focus from wellbeing to profit

maximization, which is very common. With government involvement, sports decisions and plans

can be looked after to align with one common mission. Sports are also used by governments and

agencies for social interaction, especially between people belonging to different backgrounds. By

providing per match incentives and bonuses and a helathy lifestyle, the involvement helps in the

country's economic prosperity.

Talking about the reason behind the involvement of CCT and the government in sports in the UK

is to increase the sports opportunities in the UK along with improving the quality of sports and

social benefits. The reason was the wellbeing of society and and to educate the citizens regarding

the importance of playing sports and providing them with enough facilities to be socially active

and prosperous. However, two big reasons were mainly why the UK’s government did CCT;

child abuse and overseas professional sports.

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With the increasing cases of child abuse within UK sports and the government's inability to

handle them, the government decided to launch public sports organizations that can hire extra

employees to ensure that child abuse cases can be minimized. The Law tennis association was

the first federation founded under CCT to help prevent child abuse cases. Remarkable work was

done with the minimization of child abuse cases within the first six months. The people

responsible for child abuse were sentenced to a punishment that helped the government fulfil the

cause of launching CCT. NSPCC, another private federation, partnership with Sports England, a

government sports organization, to stop child abuse cases from the country. The partnership also

helped in declining child abuse cases, thereby succeeding the cause of government and other

agencies' involvement.

Another reason for the combined work by CCT and the government was to open sports

opportunities to UK immigrants. When the government entirely ruled sports, immigrants didn’t

have many opportunities to participate in sports. To fill this gap, CCT was launched that

organized events for immigrants, held competitions between immigrants and UK citizens, and

gave immigrants incentives to participate in sports that helped in bridging communication gap

between UK citizens and immigrants and made immigrants feel a sense of belonging in the

country.

Though CCT has been beneficial for UK sports, still there is a contested nature of CCT sports

policy which no one can decline. With CCT, the participation of the government in terms of

funding as declined, which has resulted in a low pace growing of the sports industry in the UK.

the managerial control has shifted from public to private sectors, which has resulted in increased

fees for participating in private sports events for maximizing the organization’s profit. Private

sectors have a limited amount to invest in sports, and they do that only when they have the surety
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of getting a good return on investment. This has caused a slowdown in work done in the UK's

sports industry, with preference changed from social prosperity to profit maximization. The less

managerial power to the government has minimized accountability that has somewhat declined

the UK's quality of sports. With less interference by the government, funding has declined that

has affected the sports in the UK in comparison to facilities available when government was

inpower..

There are many other contested nature of CCT sports policy. Many private sports federations are

more in a race against each other and generate revenue and profit rather than maximize social

prosperity by using sports. With such huge numbers of private federations, limited resources and

fundings have been continuousaly declining the quality of sports in the UK compared to the

other developed countries of the world. NGOs of sports have a relax to pay tax. Under the

objective of serving society with sports, many organizations register themselves and negatively

impact society by not paying tax. However, they have been maximizing their revenue and profit

by adopting clever strategies under the name of sports federations.

As we move towards the next slide, I will discuss the centrality of power, value, and ideology in

the UK's sports policy after adopting CCT. The centrality of power is still the government but in

a weak position in comparison to before CCT. The power to distribute resources and finances is

in the hand of the government. However, some of the power power has shifted from the central

government to local authorities to the district government for better accountability, finances, and

decision-making.

The centrality of values is the private sports bodies who decide the quality of sports, the options

available, and whom. The government keeps an eye on the private bodies, but still, decision-

making related to the private bodies is in the government's hand. The private federations decide
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the number of sports events, the participants, the quality of events and the sports facilities

available.

After adopting CCT, the centre of ideology was the equality of sports facilities to all the citizens,

including the immigrants. The ideology was to provide sports opportunities to women and

children as well as equal quality and facilities. The steps to stop child abuse were taken to create

a fair sports environment in the UK. Along with that, immigrants were given a crucial part in the

ideology of sports in the UK so that the overall equality ideology can flourish.

To conclude, I can say that the involvement of government in sports is for the wellbeing of

society and to improve the sports facilities. After the announcement of CCT, government and

private institutions work collaborate to remove social evils from the society along with

improving the sports standard. For the UK citizens, the number of sports options have increased

as a large number of private institutions have taken part in the sports industry. The biggest work

done by CCT is the minimization of child abuse which was prevailing in the UK sport’s industry.

Strict measures, hiring of a supervisor, and punishment has helped in reducing child abuse from

the industry. The immigrants of the UK had opportunity to get involve in sports which was not

existing before. Better communication, involvement with locals, and a friendly atmosphere was

only possible when immigrants felt ownership. CCT has helped a lot, the only need is to have

strict monitoring of the private bodies to ensure that they are working for people and for the

sports industry, instead for their own profit.