Sporting Futures Wales: Understanding Participation and Identifying Opportunities

Key Information

Lead Researchers: T. Alexander Swain
Subject Area: Children’s sport participation analytics
Funding Body: Sport Wales
Project Duration: 6 months
Partners: Sport Wales
Further Information: t.a.swain@swansea.ac.uk

Challenge

Ensuring that children and young people across Wales have the opportunity to take part in sport is a key priority, but understanding where support is most needed is not always straightforward. While participation levels are well monitored, there is less clarity around where unmet demand exists, which sports may have the greatest growth potential, and how patterns differ between areas and communities.

Developing a clearer picture of these trends is important to help ensure that investment and support can be targeted where they are most likely to make a difference in helping more children become active and stay active through sport.

Method

This project brings together information from the School Sport Survey, National Survey for Wales, alongside wider population and demographic data to better understand how children’s sport participation is changing across Wales. The work looks at trends in overall participation, extracurricular sport, and demand for different activities, as well as how these patterns differ between local areas and groups of young people. This includes exploring how participation varies in relation to factors such as deprivation, ethnicity, and school age. By looking at these trends together, the project aims to highlight where there may be opportunities to grow participation and where targeted support could help reduce inequalities in access to sport.

Findings

Initial analyses show that patterns of participation and demand differ meaningfully between sports, local authorities, and groups of young people. In several cases, interest in particular sports appears to be increasing without a corresponding rise in participation, which may indicate opportunities to expand provision or address barriers to access. The work is also beginning to identify differences associated with factors such as socioeconomic status and school stage, helping to highlight where targeted support could help broaden participation. These insights will help build a stronger evidence base to inform decisions about where future effort and investment could have the greatest impact.

Impact

This work is helping Sport Wales build a stronger evidence base to support decisions about where to focus effort and investment. By providing a clearer understanding of participation patterns and demand across Wales, the project will help ensure resources can be directed where they are most likely to increase opportunities for children and young people. In practical terms, this means helping to identify which sports may have the greatest growth potential, which areas may benefit most from support, and how future survey results can be used to track whether investment is making a difference.