Overview

Sport England required a research organisation to take over the collation, analysis and reporting of the impact of their national Satellite Club programme.

The Challenge

The Sport England Satellite Club programme is a £48 million investment into County Sports Partnerships and National Sports Governing Bodies. Its aim is to help young people and young adults bridge the gap between schools, colleges, universities and community sport and provide new opportunities to create lifelong sporting habits. Following two years of successfully rolling out the delivery of satellite and hub clubs across the country, Sport England wanted to measure and understand the impact on participants’ retention rates, their perceptions of the programme, the sustainability of clubs and the role County Sports Partnerships and National Governing Bodies were playing.

How We Helped Sport England

Substance began by reviewing all the information which had been collected from delivery agencies and decided to build a Satellite Club Data Portal so information could be analysed, reflected upon and smarter decisions made about programme development. The new Portal enabled Sport England to have an overview of the location and types of satellite clubs, associated hub clubs and the numbers of participants attending each of the different types of provision. This, combined with case study and perception survey work that is currently being delivered by Substance, will enable Sport England to segment participant data and examine success rates for different groups of young people and different delivery sites. It will also inform Sport England’s sustainability strategy for the programme and individual managing agencies, ensuring more young people develop a sporting habit throughout their adult life.

The Results

Substance documented the findings in order to produce a final summary report, informing Sport England of the impact that satellite clubs have on the number of young people regularly participating in sport, the sustainability of these impacts, what drives these impacts and to understand the contributions and value provided by different delivery partners. The final report rounds off this particular project and can be found here.