Spoilt for Choice: The Great British Sports Fan

Performance Communications | November 18, 2013

Attending the latest Sport Industry Breakfast brought home exactly how lucky I am both to work in the British sports industry and to be a sports fan in this country. The panel* consisted of leading figures from British Sport, each of which is in the process of organising a high profile global sporting event on these shores in the next few years.

Ed Warner, Chairman of UK Athletics, used the phrase ‘Golden Decade of Sport’ and while a full ten years might be stretching it, taking London 2012 Olympics as the most iconic of starting points, the five years to 2017 sees Britain as the destination for a plethora top class international sporting events:

Olympics and Paralympics, 2012
Rugby League World Cup, 2013
Opening stages of Tour de France, 2014
Commonwealth Games, 2014
The Ryder Cup, 2014
Rugby Union World Cup, 2015
Athletics and Paralympic World Championships, 2017

Add to this the annual iconic events such as Wimbledon, The Open, Six Nations, Premier League to name but a few and the Greatest British public is spoilt with opportunities to get up close to the sporting crème de la crème. Britain is currently the epicentre of world sport and as a sports fan is there anywhere you’d rather be in the world? I don’t believe any other nation, in history, can boast such a spread of global events in such a short period of time**.

While it will be near impossible to match or even beat the excitement, sponsorship activity and value of the London Olympics there is one sport and event, suspicious by its absence from the list above that could. While the Football World Cup eludes British shores for now let’s still celebrate the sheer number of sporting events we’ll have the opportunity to see in the next few years. London 2012 wasn’t the end, it was just the beginning. I just need to buy some tickets…

Seph

*Brian Barwick, Chairman of Rugby Football League, Debbie Jevans, CEO of England Rugby 2015, David Grevemberg, Chief Executive of Glasgow 2014 Ltd and Ed Warner, Chairman of UK Athletics.

** 2019 will also see the Cricket World Cup return and the UK is highly likely to incorporate matches in the re-vamped 2020 European football championships

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