ASOIF Future of Global Sport Report
In a fast-evolving world, sport is increasingly subjected to technological, socio-economic and geo-political developments that all sports governing bodies must anticipate and be prepared to respond to. It is therefore the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), who has a mission to defend the common interests of and act as a provider of added value to its 33 Summer Olympic International Federations (IFs), has initiated the Future of Global Sport Project in 2018 with the objective to enable the IFs to have an adequate understanding of what the future may look like when they take decisions with long-term impacts.
After almost 12 months’ work, ASOIF launched the Future of Global Sport report in February 2019, which aggregates the views of over 20 thought leaders and decision-makers from sport, business and government. It addresses political, social, technological, legal and economic influences, all of which are impacting IF’s decision-making and the model under which sport will be managed going forward. It also provides a historical overview of the foundations that underpin organised sport as we know it today and delves into the challenges currently being faced by the world of sport, such as changing consumption behaviours and the increasing complexity of staging major IF and multi-sport mega-events. The report lays out a vision of the future of sports over the next 20 years, stressing a number of recurrent themes and providing key recommendations for the IFs and for ASOIF itself.
Key findings of the report include:
IFs must demonstrate an exemplary standard of governance in order to maintain the confidence of the media, governments, business and the public at large while also protecting the integrity of their sports;
IFs will need to develop a more proactive, creative, commercially driven and collaborative mind set, re-evaluating their role and strategies in favour of increased partnership with the private sector;
IFs will need to embrace “digital” in earnest, transforming their business models, organisational designs and operational cultures;
Today’s sporting event model will evolve so that true partnerships entailing closer cooperation and balanced risk-sharing among and between stakeholders, including business and government agencies will be a requirement;
Athletes with sufficient following are gaining influence in today’s disintermediated media landscape and will need to be offered greater incentives to compete in established events;
In order to attract new people to participate in and consume their sports, IFs must adapt their strategies to a changing society and to how, in future, people will discover and consume content;
If they adapt, IFs will remain widely accepted as unique bodies effectively capable of governing and administrating their sports on a worldwide basis as custodians of the rules, training of judges, managing the events calendar and coordinating and funding global development initiatives, etc.; and
It will become increasingly important to have an effective “umbrella” organisation working to promote and defend the Olympic IFs’ collective common interests given the range of major common challenges that IFs share but can never be expected to address individually.
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