The Olympics and funding - some figures

snowflake5 Sat Aug 23, 2008 at 03:18:43 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

So much emphasis in the press about how "John Major's lottery" provided the success in Beijing - but lottery money has actually gone down since 2001



I thought I'd do what no one else has done - take a look at the actual amounts of money provided by the lottery.

First of all, according to the National Lottery Good Causes site of every £1 raised by the lottery, only 28p goes into good causes.

The good causes are shared out as follows:

  • Charities, Health, Education & the environment 50%
  • Sports 16.67%
  • Arts 16.67%
  • Heritage 16.67%
Camelot says the totals raised for good causes are as follows:

2001/2 £1,941m
2002/3 £1,378m
2003/4 £1,309m
2004/5 £1,354m
2005/6 £1,509m
2006/7 £1,419m

which means that the amounts going into sports is

2001/2 £323.56m
2002/3 £229.71m
2003/4 £218.21m
2004/5 £225.72m
2005/6 £251.55m
2006/7 £236.55m

Therefore the amount in 2006/7 was some £87m less than in 2001. This is no surprise - the numbers of people playing the lottery are down from the heyday of the mid 90's, as people realise how difficult it is to win anything.

If medals are down to money, you would imagine that we would have done better in Athens and Sydney than at Beijing.

Step in the Labour government - following our Tone winning the 2012 Olympics for us, our Gord announced in the 2006 budget that he'd put in £265m into sport - up from £84m for Athens and £65m for Sydney.

It's the surge of government money that has made the difference.

But of course it's too much to expect the media to give credit where it is due, much less people like John Major, busily touring the studios trying to rehabilitate himself by taking the credit for Beijing.



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The Olympics and funding - some figures | 8 comments (8 topical)

Re: The Olympics and funding - some figures (#1)

by fearlessfrank on Sat Aug 23, 2008 at 08:10:13 PM GMT

"It's the surge of government money that has made the difference."

Well maybe.. but that depends on how it was spent, doesn't it?

We do hear a lot of criticism along the lines of Labour mistaking spending with achieving. 

Still, credit where it's due - maybe it's just that we've got an exceptionally talented bunch of athletes this year?

And talking of gvernment money might raise a few hackles - it's our money!

 


Re: The Olympics and funding - some figures (#2)

by snowflake5 on Sat Aug 23, 2008 at 09:05:24 PM GMT

Funding is correlated with achievement in the sporting world. There is no way you can train to Olympic standard and hold down a full time job at the same time. Therefore the funding lets the athelete treat their sport as their job, so they can train in daylight. Of course once they start winning, prize money and commercial sponsorship come into play. But unless you have funding in the first place, many would be Olympians don't even get to compete.

The Tory style of not funding was tested during their 18 years in government - and it resulted in us getting one miserable gold at Atlanta in 1996, a worse performance than many third world countries.

Then again John Major's Britain was third world. Homeless people and beggars around every street corner, everything shappy, neglected, unrepaired and falling to bits and we were despised and pitied across the world.

The Tory mind-set is that of a person who thinks repairing their roof is a "waste of money". But it's false economy, because if you neglect things, the damage gets worse and worse, and instead of having to fork out out for a few roof tiles, you suddenly have the whole building falling down and needing to be re-built from scratch.

Much of the money Labour has spent has been on rebuilding and restoring infrastructure that was neglected beyond belief. If Labour stays in power, we simply need to maintain things. If Tories come into power, they will do their usual thing of neglecting and not repairing anything, and in a decade we will be back to being a third world decrepit place again. Labour's great achievement is that it's made Britain great again (and not just in the Olympian sense).


[ Parent ]

Re: The Olympics and funding - some figures (#6)

by fearlessfrank on Sun Aug 24, 2008 at 12:59:15 AM GMT

Well, are you trying to answer the point I made?

I think not. How was the government money (ie ours)  spent in a way that can take credit for our haul of medals?


[ Parent ]

Re: The Olympics and funding - some figures (#8)

by bigpapi on Wed Aug 27, 2008 at 01:38:09 PM GMT

Perhaps you should take time to listen to the athletes themselves: our money, through UK Sport (which distributes on behalf of the Government) has allowed all the track cyclists to move to Manchester and train as a squad at the Commonwealth Games Velodrome and to employ the best coaches from around the world.  The same goes for rowing, where all the competitors are, unlike their predecessors, full-time professional rowers.  There are plenty more examples, but hopefully these two sports have opened your eyes (if they are prepared to be opened) to the way in which our taxpayers money, which DCMS gives to UK Sport to distribute, has helped TeamGB to fourth place in the medals table.


[ Parent ]

Re: The Olympics and funding - some figures (#4)

by adwilliams134 on Sat Aug 23, 2008 at 11:27:55 PM GMT

Oh here we go  - snowflake's stats.

Bottom line is that we have been guarenteed by New Labour that there will be no more government (ie ours) money.

The bottom line to that  bottom line is that they are telling the truth or telling lies.

Time will tell and I know where my money is.  How many of you have the courage to stake your credibilty on what New Labour guarentee?


[ Parent ]

Re: The Olympics and funding - some figures (#5)

by bigpapi on Sun Aug 24, 2008 at 12:07:07 AM GMT

The only guarantee that has been given is that there will be no more Government money for the London 2012 budget.  There is already a commitment for more money to go into direct funding of sports through UK sport, the only caveat being that DCMS has to raise a percentage of it on the open market which they have been unable to do; I suspect, given our performance in Beijing, the Government will be obliged to make up that shortfall.

There will also, at some point, be money given to the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games budget, which will further enhance our performances at post-2016 Olympics.


[ Parent ]

Re: The Olympics and funding - some figures (#3)

by ComradeNorton on Sat Aug 23, 2008 at 10:12:15 PM GMT

I've always felt that if you can't explain a statistic in a sentence then it is not worth bothering.

We would be better off just running the line we are just luckier than the tories.


Re: The Olympics and funding - some figures (#7)

by NB on Mon Aug 25, 2008 at 08:41:12 AM GMT

There a big time-lags between funding and spoting success, so it's far too simplistic to look at the trend in total lottery funding.  However in 06-07 UK Sport got £53M of Exchequer Funds and £53M from the Lottery, so the extra government money has helped somewhat (though critics claim that the government has diverted lottery funding to areas that should properly be funded by the government, which complicates matters).

To put this into context, £53M is less than 10% of the money spent on management consultants each year in the NHS, and less than 1% of the extra capital that had to be injected into Northern Rock after the bungled nationalisation (and probably less than half the money spent on advisers fees).


The Olympics and funding - some figures | 8 comments (8 topical)