The Road to the 2024 Election Manifesto – 100 policy ideas for sport, physical activity and wellbeing.

Henham Managing Director, Nick King, writes about the untapped soft power potential of sport in the Sports Think Tank’s ‘The Road to the 2024 Election’ Manifesto.

Sport is unrivalled in terms of its ability to reach hundreds of millions of people at a stroke – as well as providing a means to build relationships both commercially and diplomatically. The UK is also unique in its pre-eminence in sport, benefiting from a diverse variety of sports (offering opportunities to build relationships with a large range of countries), globally recognised athletes in multiple sports and the most internationally consumed sports league in the world – the Premier League. Beyond these, the UK also benefits from a number of ‘blue riband’ events such as Wimbledon, the FA Cup and the Grand National. 

Despite this abundance of sporting assets, sport is one of the UK’s least appreciated and least well exploited soft power tools at its disposal. Other countries have recognised the diplomatic potential of sport including Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the United States. In spite of this, the UK has failed to act in a strategic, joined up or deliberate way to take advantage of our unique sporting pedigree and assets.

In order to resolve this, the report calls for a sports diplomacy strategy which would set out key objectives and how best to achieve them, as well as cross-departmental collaboration, particularly between the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Business and Trade.