Summary:
We were contracted by Black Country Consortium (BCC Ltd) on behalf of the Black Country BeActive Partnership to undertake an insight into clubs in the Black Country. This insight sought to identify the health of clubs, their needs and also segment them into a range of relevant types. Further to this the identification of the support they need and more importantly from who is a critical outcome.
Approach:
We undertook a range of approaches to make sure we developed a broad view of and from clubs. This involved an online survey, a range of focus groups, telephone conversations and meetings with a range of people directly involved in club sport. We also gained views from each of the four local authorities, a range of governing bodies and some unaffiliated groups engaging in sporting activity. We compared the outcomes of the research with the Sport and Recreation Alliance national club survey which gave us comparators particularly in relation to the affiliated club survey.
From this range of sources we have developed a “dashboard” of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and this has led to the development of three segmented types of clubs;
TYPE ONE: who own or lease facilities,
TYPE TWO: who hire facilities
TYPE THREE: who are not affiliated and undertake casual participation in sporting activities.
We were further contracted to carry out case studies of three sports clubs across the Sub-region. This was enhanced by a case study of casual swimming.
"The service was excellent, it provide a strong bedrock to move forward. Sport Structures were responsive and allowed for organic growth within the project. I don't think their was any improvements we would make for this project, however moving forward the value of the insight groups would influence the localised nature of information gathering"
Simon Fisher - Black Country BeActive
Outcome;
This has led us to our recommendations for each of the key partners supporting clubs; the Black Country BeActive Partnership itself, the four local authorities, national governing bodies of sport and other partners linked with the emerging national strategy. These recommendations fall into the following areas:#
- Clarity of support for each “type” of club or group in a national and local context
- Coordinated support for clubs and the breaking down of perceived ownership by partners
- The coordination of funding opportunities including access to expertise within local authorities and different sports organisations
- Better support for a range of clubs seeking club accreditation
- The marketing of support available to clubs
