“THW prioritise funding for amateur and community sports over professional and high performance sport”

Set up

Firstly note we don’t think gettin this funding is a part of this debate, we’re not gonna argue on who can
get more funding, this funding just exists and we’re deciding where to put it

What amateur and community sport looks like:

With school or local club, play to keep fit or make friends, unpaid

What professional sport looks like:

National (team for your region) or international (country team), paid to play

Also like sponsors/ads are a lot more prevalent? Young kids still get sponsored by like maccas/wholly
bagels not so big tho idk

What prioritising looks like

Think we have to say that it is not enough to just give equal attention, in fact amateur must be prioritised and also
ideally why neg has to prioritise professional sport over amateur sport (mech why you can never care equally about
both)
Money needed by amateur and community sport is allocated to them first, professional sport funding is
considered after and and we always put amateur first

Problem: amateur and community sport not getting enough funding therefore it can’t continue and its
benefits cant spread
We fix this problem by prioritising duh so we can ensure community and amateur sport gets what
it needs

Substantive points

1) Why community/amateur sport is most important

a) Firstly we win out simply because amateur sport has better values
i) Amateur sport: someone on the sideline is a parent, wanting your kid to have fun
ii) Professional sport: someone on the sideline is typically watching for entertainment,
no personal involvement, money is often bet, so winning becomes the most
important thing
iii) We think that amateur sport has better values because it promotes more healthy
competition, more caring about having fun, outcome of this is it is a more
enjoyable side to be involved in and therefore it is better
b) But even if you don’t believe it just on that:
c) Mental and physical health of players
i) Available to more people because lower barrier to enter since you don’t need to be
super good
(1) Therefore more people can enter and get the benefits
(2) Those benefits look like: fitness/physical wellbeing, making new friends,
mental health as exercise releases endorphins etc,
ii) Accessible role models
(1) Cool coach you look up to, someone really good in your team, the older
team
(2) You can talk to the role model, they can hear your personal experience
(3) In your community so
d) Outreach
i) Previous mech, more people can get into it because of the lower barrier to
participate, so larger impact, larger benefits
e) OUTCOME: this makes amateur and community sport more deserving of getting funding
so that it can expand and these benefits continue
2) How this sets a precedent about caring about smaller level initiatives and why that precedent is
good
a) The precedent
i) Develop community relationships
ii) Encourage community initiatives eg. fundraisers, community spaces (gardens,
halls), voting in local elections
iii) Supporting community - goes through to supporting small businesses (covid
recovery),
iv) Creates a cycle of community aid
b) This is the place to set the precedent because:
i) It creates the opportunity to affect multiple aspects of their lives
ii) Sports will become more visible (more teams, practises etc)
iii) Will be spoken about more (good politically so gov will talk about it)

3) How we also get better professional sport

a) Community sport is the foundation for professional sport
i) Why?
ii) That’s how people start in sports
iii) You can’t go straight into prof sports because you need practise/experience
iv) People initially enter sport to be with friends/make friends which happens through
amateur/community rather than prof
b) Therefore when we don’t care about community sport
i) this bad stuff to prof sport will happen
ii) People don’t enter the sport, less people = less good sport (harder to find talent),
decreases the value of the competition
iii) People are less invested because they haven’t played it so aren’t interested in
watching it (less tickets sold, less watches)
c) And when we prioritise community
i) This good stuff to prof sport happens
ii) Better development for players, more opportunity to find talent
iii) More experience with sport = more investment in sport = more money for prof
through tickets etc