📉 The Demise of UK Athletics

The Olympics was amazing. Three weeks of athletics at the highest level behind a brilliant Parisien backdrop.

Team GB returned noe more medal than we did in Tokyo, but showed a steep declining level of gold medals (22 vs 14).

The reduced gold medal total explores a declining dominance we have at the very top level.

It doesn’t surprise me to see this trend appear. There has been a changing landscape for UK Athletics off the track in the last 7 years.

Behind the scenes, there has been a sea of change leading to bankruptcy fears and gross mismanagement of resources.

Today we explore what has gone one and the say ways in which it affects our brightest talent.

On August 4th 2012, Dame Jess Ennis, Sir Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford all won gold medals on the track within an hour of each other.

It was labelled and branded “Super Saturday” in the UK.

The Olympics was in our back yard and our Athletics Team were killing it. There were golds galore, which reflected booming commercial performance off-the-track.

Fast forward a decade and UK Athletics is in a different place. Not that dominant on-the-track and verging on bankruptcy off the track.

How did we get here? And if the business is bankrupt where on earth do we go from this point forwards?

Like most things in life it starts at the top. The timeline of leadership at UK Athletes has resembled that of a soap opera in recent years with the chaos starting in 2017.

• September 2007: Neils de Vos Appointed as CEO of UKA. Ed Warner was his Chairman

• Sept 2017: Neils De Vos resigns. Ed Warner follows

• September 2017: Nigel Holl Interim CEO

• October 2018: Nigel Holl steps away from CEO role

  • No named CEO of UK Athletics 🥴

• 24th January 2020: Nic Coward Interim CEO

• 13th February 2020: Joanna Adams becomes CEO

• 18th March 2020: Jo Coates becomes CEO

• July 2022: Jack Buckner becomes CEO

5 CEO’s in 5 years. Three in 3 months at the beginning of 2020. Not good.

It’s worth noting that UK Athletics is often used as a catchall term to describe athletics in the UK. However, its important to remember that UK Athletics in this instance is a business. They are the governing body of athletics in the UK and are central to the success of the sport. 

The changing nature of the leadership has caused alot of problems.

This graph shows the cash reserves of UK Athletics since 2006:

Following London 2012 business was booming. Events were sold out. TV revenue was high and Sponsorship revenue was fine.

Lately though, its the complete opposite. The Diamond League Event at the London stadium last year had a sell-out crowd of 50,000 people.

The event lost £500K for UK Athletics. 

A sellout crowd in a massive Olympic-ready stadium showcasing some of the worlds best talent should not be so financially damaging. Especially when hosting events is one of the most important revenue streams for UK Athletics.

But it was. And highlighted a big problem for the governing body in the UK.

There are three ways in which UK Athletics makes money:

1. Hosting Events

2. Broadcast Revenue

3. Sponsors

Unfortunately for UKA, the Diamond League events at the London Stadium lose money.

In 2021 they had to host the Diamond League in Birmingham as they could use the already assembled Commonwealth Games stadium at a lower cost.

In 2019 they had to host the Diamond League in Gateshead because the cost of turning the London Stadium from a West Ham Game to an athletics ready track cost too much.

The events have required low-cost host stadiums and injections from UK Sport to run.

Alongside that, the BBC caught wind and dropped a hammer blow.

In the UK the Athletics has been on the BBC for as long as I can remember. 

The production crew of Gabby Logan, Claire Balding, Colin Jackson, Michael Johnson, Denise Lewis and the amazing Jeanette Kwaakye are legendary. However in 2020, a report by The Times suggested the BBC were going to walk away from their contract with UK Athletics.

They had a £3m/year contract for six years to show the rights to UK athletics and reportedly did not think that deal represented value for money.

There were no talks about a replacement broadcaster either.

Ed Warner in his newsletter that he writes on his Sport Inc Substack said the following:

That didn't happen.

The BBC negotiated to pay just the production costs for the events, removing the £3m a year they used to pay. They also negotiated a separate deal with the Diamond League themselves to show Diamond League events when they happen. 

This then became a massive problem for sponsors.

With no major broadcaster and events being at smaller venues two key sponsors started to pull away.

• Müller

• Nike

Müller ended their partnership with UK Athletics in 2022, a deal that has been in place since 2014.

Nike have a long term partnership with UK Athletics. UK Athletics agreed to extend the deal until 2040(!) but as part of the extension they negotiated a massive upfront payment to help the business stay afloat.

Fascinating stuff.

The sad thing about all of this is how it affects the athletes themselves. With reduced broadcasting from the BBC and reduced central sponsorship from the likes of Müller and Nike, our best talent do not get exposed to the casual audience as much as they used to.

During this time we've seen the likes of Dina Asher Smith, Keeley Hodgkinson, Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Zharnel Hughes and Laura Muir rise to the top of their respective sports.

Adverts like this used to be broadcast on National Television all the time:

Without a sponsor, they don’t happen.

With the BBC showing some athletics meets on BBC iPlayer instead of BBC1, fans and casual audiences do not see the athletes as much as they used to. Without the elevation the commercial opportunities fall, less money is made, they cannot maybe train as much as they used to.

It’s them who miss out.

Fortunately, the Nike “upfront payment” has helped. UK Athletics now has £6.5m cash in the bank.

They have also launched a joint venture with the organisation that runs the London Marathon and the Great North Run. This venture aims to put on exciting athletics events over the next five years with a bid for London to host the Commonwealth Games and the 2029 World Championships.

Desperate measures perhaps, but a step in the right direction.

If you follow my platform I speak about commercial sustainability a lot, UK Athletics is a great reason as to why its so important.

If you want to see how its just as bad at The Olympics too, watch this below. A fascinating event but another case of a broken business model:

See you next week.