Why building a strong definition will transform sport and physical activity
Why real time sector data is going to become more and more important as time goes on
Blog by Phill Wright, Head of Insight and Business Transformation at CIMSPA.
Data… it’s not just for nerds! Honest. Having access to real time data is a gamechanger for all in sport and physical activity.
With our new data platform, Datacity, we are delighted to share the following insights:
- There are currently 21,651 businesses in sport and physical activity in the UK
- Outside of London, Leeds has the biggest sport and physical activity employed workforce in the UK with 10.7k people
- The UK’s sport and physical activity sector is truly a global affair with business ownership stemming from over 37 other countries including India, Finland, and South Africa
- Small to medium sized businesses (0-49 employees) make up at least 90% of all businesses in sport and physical activity
- Exercise and fitness are the greatest contributor to new jobs in the sector accounting for 45% of all job adverts
- The sector has seen a 247% growth in businesses since 2013.
Our ambition is to truly inform decision making so that:
- Individuals know where the jobs/opportunities are both regionally and nationally
- Organisations are future proofed and built upon more robust and well-informed market and business data
- Greater investment is injected into sport and physical activity with more businesses succeeding
- Sector trends are accessible for all
- Government better recognise and support sport and physical activity
- More people engage with and benefit from regular sport and physical activity.
As we start to share some of these brand-new insights, keep an eye out for our emails and we’ll keep you updated with how you can access the latest data on sport and physical activity.
You can also visit the CIMSPA Insight Hub to take a greater look at our work. Any insight related questions should be sent to insight@cimspa.co.uk.
A bit of background…
When starting out at CIMSPA, one of the first tasks thrown at me was to define the sport and physical activity workforce. Initially it sounded quite straight forward but, I really underestimated the job in hand. How hard could it be? Well, there have been several key challenges to navigate through in getting to where we are and by no means have, we arrived at the utopia... but, we’ve absolutely made huge progress.
We all view and describe the sport and physical activity workforce differently. In some cases, we can’t even agree the title of a job or an industry, for example: is it performance sport or professional sport, exercise and fitness or health and wellbeing, is it fitness instructor or gym instructor, coaching assistant or assistant coach, entry manager or duty manager?
I could go on... we spent hours debating this with committees when developing Professional Standards. Those in sport have a particular view, those in fitness again have their own unique perspective and whilst we’re gradually coming together, there are still clear differences in how we view and describe the world we operate in.
For this reason, the consultative approach to building a clear definition has been vital. By engaging with hundreds of individuals and organisations across different industry areas, we’ve been able to take onboard different perspectives and use common themes to shape the structure and language we’ve used. And as we continue to develop the definition, this approach will remain in our methodology.
The sector is ever changing!
How is it possible to create a definition around something that continually appears to be evolving and changing? In some ways it felt like an impossible task for this reason alone. The shifting trends in behaviours around participation (more people now indoor cycle at home than ever before, paying over £3,000 and a large monthly membership fee in some cases!).
And when I was growing up, online fitness classes didn’t exist! An online only instructor was never a career choice: it didn’t exist. We all accept the importance of trends within sport and physical activity, but how do you define something that anticipates future trends? Well, you can’t really… certainly not accurately. However, you can approach it in an iterative way using data to validate the definition and acknowledge emerging trends that will inform the future.
This is exactly what we’ve done.
We’ve accepted that like professional standards, the sector definition will need updating periodically. We’ve also been able to find a way of measuring our sector with real time data that helps us understand where growth is taking place, where jobs are being created, where innovation is taking place, geographical trends, where there’s decline and this for the first time in the sector’s history gives us the ability to truly understand our sector in an accurate and real time way.
If we continue to have multiple views and definitions of the sector, we can only expect to continually be misunderstood and undervalued by decision makers. A single definition, backed with credible data that recognises top-level perspectives but creates a strong case for improvement is the way that we get recognition at all authority levels and from other sectors, like health and business.
So, over the last few years we have been busy building this ‘definition’, investigating data opportunities and we now are in a truly exciting position that we feel can reach and benefit every organisation and individual working in sport and physical activity.
But having a definition is one thing, having the numbers behind it that illustrate the scale, depth, growth, and much more is vital to bring it to life and give it credibility.
That is exactly what we now have: we’re now able to truly quantify our sector and access real time insights never seen before. This is an incredibly exciting milestone for the entire sector and CIMSPA is committed to be supporting a more efficient and resilient world for us all to work and play in.