New Sport – The Future of Sport.

By Wayne Goldsmith

Sport is dead.

More accurately “Old Sport” – the way we’ve designed, developed and delivered competitive sport for the past 100 years is dead.

All over the world amateur sporting clubs are struggling. They’re experience an alarming – and in some cases – catastrophic – decline in the numbers of kids playing competitive sport.

It’s harder and harder – almost impossible – to find and keep coaches, referees, umpires and other volunteer sporting officials.

District and regional sporting associations are battling to survive…they’re on their knees.

Sporting organisations – particularly the Olympic sports in rural and regional areas are close to complete extinction.

Governments at all levels – local, regional, state and national are all investing considerable time, energy and resources to try and determine what’s going wrong – and why it – “the” sporting system – is falling apart.

At a time when global health issues such as diabetes and heart disease are rampart and the need for physical activity has never been more important, less and less people are turning to competitive sport to improve their health and well-being.

In Australia.

In New Zealand.

In Canada.

In the UK…the USA….South Africa.

This is a global issue – competitive sport is dead.

The way we’ve designed, developed and delivered competitive sport – “Old Sport” is quite simply and very clearly not working.

It’s time a new kind of sport.

New Sport

That’s why I’ve created New Sport: To help sports, sporting organisations, governments, coaches, parents – and most importantly – people who want to play sport – discover what sport could be – should be – and can be.

New Sport is a new and better way of looking at – building – and growing effective and engaging sports experiences.

I’ve been working in the sports industry for over 25 years and I’ve seen the industry become progressively focused on an almost formulaic way of doing things.

It’s not money or global warming or kids’ obsession with the Internet that’s killing competitive sport: it’s conservative thinking, limited imagination and a complete lack of creativity that’s led us to this place: a place where so much of the industry is lost: lacking direction and failing to connect with the needs of people, of families and of communities.

Where Old Sport was about rules, regulation, policies and politics, New Sport is about people: about engaging with, connecting with and building relationships with – people.

Sporting organisations do not own sport. National Sporting Organisations, International Sporting bodies, Governments….do not own sport: sport belongs to the people who “do” it.

The articles, the videos and the podcasts on this site will be unashamedly challenging, confronting and intensely disruptive to the people and organisations who’ve placed their faith in Old Sport.

This is the place where the old ideas about the sports industry – about coaching – about sports science – about competitive sport – about high performance sport – about volunteerism – about sports politics – about administering and about leading sport – will be dismantled – and torn apart.

This is also the place where new ideas, new directions, new innovations and new ways of doing, playing, researching, governing, enjoying, participating and competing in sport will be revealed, discussed, shared and grown.

If you want to learn about how sport was – buy a biography about a famous Olympian from the past or read a book detailing how your sport was played in the last century.

If you want to learn how to change the sports industry so that it actually works – and be one of the people who can lead the future direction of sport around the world – you’ve come to the right place.

Welcome to New Sport – The Future of Sport.

Wayne Goldsmith