Circumnavigating the globe with Area Presidents - a well spent 90 minutes.

Every two months I sit down with my six World Athletics’ Area Presidents to discuss priorities, goals, issues and share sporting and geopolitical activities.  In a little under 2 hours we have circumnavigated the globe together, identifying positive trends and also trends that give us cause to stop and discuss how we may either support an Area or come together to create mitigations for a trend that may become one we will all face in due course.

Today was one of the latter occasions.  I always enjoy the first of our six meetings a year (not counting the Council meetings we have in addition) because everyone is upbeat and eager to share their priorities and plans for the coming year.  They support and enhance World Athletics’ priorities which we shared with them and others during our December 2024 Council meeting.

It is shaping up to be a very busy year in terms of events and the focus on athlete development, building skills and talent across our sport through our coaching and technical official courses, our gender leadership and safeguarding programmes and a slew of smart constitutional amendments to boost governance in our Areas and our Member Federations.

What caused us to stop and discuss today were the struggles shared by our South American Area (Atletismo Sudamericano) with some countries in the region who had bid for and committed to funding sports events, including athletics events, this year but were no longer able to deliver the finance they had signed up to due to government funding cuts to many sports this year.

A discussion around the table (well screen) saw similar, albeit patchy, examples in other continental areas.  Although the sports funding seemed spread more widely to include more than just one sport unlike the direction of Argentina – no guesses where 95% of the funding is going in that country - it made me think about the responsibility of International Federations to get together more often to discuss sport trends.   And, of course the role of National Olympic Committees to fight for sport funding across all Olympic Sport.

Now, of course, Governments must make their own policies and decisions, to suit the funding that is available.  And we know all governments face many competing priorities for the available funds.  What concerns me more is that IFs and NOCs must sit together and create a strong value proposition that will help local and national governments in turn value sport and continue to invest in it – if not always at elite level, then at community level.  

There are partnership models (private / public combinations) that can ensure funding multiple sports remains a good investment.

Sport matters and all of us in sport need to be able to promote and demonstrate this to our governments and our children.

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