Government Funding of Sports

Last week I attended the Zatopek 10 which is one of the bigger track events on the Australian running calendar. There was a good crowd, for athletics, and some big name athletes. Josphat Menjo was the star for the mens 10,000 metres as the quickest 10,000 metre runner so far this year. The Victorian government provided $10,000 worth of funding for the event which would have mostly funded Josphat Menjo's participation.

The Victorian government last year spent 1.5 million dollars in bringing Tiger Woods to Australia. That's 150 times more than bringing Josphat Menjo here. It would be fair to say that bringing Josphat Menjo to Victoria would bring almost zero tourism dollars. The government claims that bringing Tiger here will reap 19 million dollars worth of tourism dollars but has yet to reveal how it arrived at that figure. So from a tourism perspective bringing Tiger here is more beneficial but it's still not clear as to how much.

One thing this country rarely ever does is consider our health and well being as a measure of our progress. There is actually a very interesting TED talk by Chip Conley on this very issue which I think is worth a listen. So if we compared the participation rates and the associated health benefits of golf and athletics the imbalance in Government funding becomes profound. In the 2005-2006 census it was estimated that roughly 875,000 Australians participated in golf. If we exclude walking and aerobics then the there was roughly 775,000 Australians participating in running. On participation rates alone the imbalance in funding is glaringly obvious.

The health and well being of our citizens is as important as our GDP and government funding should start to reflect this.