March 26th, 2025 | Andrew Milton

Last week the new president of the IOC, Kirsty Coventry, was appointed. It’s one of, if not the most important job in the world of sport, leading a huge global organisation that has tentacles into government, broadcasters, sponsors and for a few weeks every couple of years takes centre stage in our living rooms.

But sport governing bodies come in all shapes and sizes. For many, working with grassroots or more ‘niche’ sports, the type of coverage and resources afforded to the IOC feel a long way off. Their days are spent on the much more real and pressing challenges – securing funding, processing grants, designing new programmes, organising tournaments, motivating their grassroots volunteer base.

Here are three questions that are worth asking.

Question 1: do your audiences clearly understand what you do?

Given the diversity of sporting organisations, it’s interesting how many synergies there are in their different strategies. These tend to focus around three key areas:

• Participation – increasing the number of people involved in playing or supporting the sport. This might be through outreach programmes, supporting local volunteers or even funding infrastructure. This is often linked to goals, either implicitly or explicitly stated about diversity, inclusion and widening the base that they appeal to.
• Creating societal impact – it’s long been recognised that sport plays a vital part in good physical health, but increasingly in fostering mental wellbeing and that’s an obvious area for governing bodies to play in to. For some however this benefit gets pushed further to highlight the role of sport in creating community cohesion beyond the individual.
• Improving performance – for most governing bodies there is a strong element of improving the level of performance in their sports. This may be through programmes aimed at players and coaches but sometimes it’s expressed in very tangible medal table targets.

But with the choices for consumers expanding all the time, volunteers getting fewer and older, audiences becoming more diverse, and a shrinking, fragmented pool of funding to go after, knowing what you do, on its own isn’t really enough. And that’s why you need to did deeper to find out how different organisations who effectively do the same thing cut through.

Question 2: Do your audience value what you’re trying to achieve and your role in making it happen?

This isn’t just a question for governing bodies in sport. We see this across multiple sectors, but those who manage to break through are those who realise that whilst they may have spent months slaving over their strategy, that on its own isn’t enough.

Those who succeed are the ones who take it to the next level and invest time in establishing a real sense of meaning for their organisations through their brand. That’s about ensuring people understand what you do and what you’re for; a good strategy will help you do that. But real meaning goes one stage further, tapping into something that your audience intrinsically value about you.

Question 3: Are you using this to form stronger connections and further your goals?

Sport is emotional. Strategy isn’t enough to connect with people. If you can’t connect with people, you won’t achieve what you need to. And if you can’t achieve what you need to, your existence could be at risk.

What happens when other challengers disrupt your model, new sports threaten to steal your participation base, or funding is diverted to other sources?

At times like these not only do you have to be clear sighted on your role and the benefit you bring – but you need to be able to communicate it in a way that inspires action and grabs at the heart strings, reminding people of why they fell in love with your sport in the first place.

Over the years, in this way we’ve helped World Triathlon not only stake their claim at the centre of the Triathlon Ecosystem but to become the beating heart that drives the sport forward. We’ve helped Commonwealth Sport define their theory of change and harness that theory to prove their worth, inspire pride and secure their place on the sporting calendar and in our cultural landscape.

So whilst there will be lots of focus on the IOC and their new president, the role of governing bodies across the sport’s ecosystem is still vital. They’re the ones who have the real impact on how we enjoy sport day to day, providing places for us to play, supporting the volunteers who organise activities for our children, or the coaches who make us just a bit better every time we play.

So telling their stories better isn’t just important for them. It’s important to all of us.