In 2020, the murder of George Floyd was a catalyst for the five Sports Councils responsible for
investing in and growing sport across the UK, to come together to explore racial inequalities in sport
and to look at how reflective our sporting system is of UK society.
Led by the five CEOs of each organisation, this group has met regularly over the past year, and
quickly established the Tackling Racism and Racial Inequality in Sport Review (TRARIIS). This was to
help better understand if the Councils were doing enough to understand the context and tackle the
issues involved.
The review involved an extensive analysis, carried out by the Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC)
at Sheffield Hallam University, of all publicly available data on race and ethnicity in sport. It also
involved an additional piece of work led by AKD Solutions, a Black‐led Learning and Development
consultancy, to carry out a lived experience research project in which over 300 people across the UK,
ranging from grassroots participants to elite athletes and coaches, shared insights into their
involvement in sport.
The findings make clear that racism and racial inequalities still exist within sport in the UK and that
there are longstanding issues, which have resulted in ethnically diverse communities being
consistently disadvantaged.
The review also highlighted the detrimental impact that this has had on individuals, leading to
mistrust and exclusion and makes clear areas where we must see change. The review has produced
two reports, published today, identifying where there are gaps as well as common themes. They set
out recommendations on how to make meaningful progress.
UK Sport, Sport England, sportscotland, Sport Wales, and Sport Northern Ireland welcome the depth
of the findings and fully accept that the recommendations should now be used to develop and
deliver tangible actions to tackle the issues raised. The Councils also want to put on record their
huge appreciation to all of those who shared their personal stories, a process which we know for
many, will have been deeply upsetting.
Sport across the UK is delivered by a broad range of organisations. We call on them to work with us,
as well as diverse communities in the UK, as we drive racial equality across all nations and in all
sports.
While recognising that this process will take time, collectively, the Councils are determined to learn
from the review and bring transformational change across sport, harnessing its huge power to drive
equality and ensuring that all parts of the system are fair, welcoming, inclusive, and diverse and that
people have positive experiences at every level.
The Councils have agreed some initial overarching commitments that all five organisations will work
on together ensuring that they are aligned to their individual strategies. These relate to people;
representation; investment, systems and insights and further details are set out below.
Each Council will also now work at pace to develop their own specific action plans to further deliver
on these commitments, considering their own local contexts and remits, addressing the
recommendations from the review.
This will involve working closely with relevant groups or communities in the coming months, to cocreate
solutions for real, lasting change and to earn trust. The resultant plans will be shared publicly
to support the wider sports sector to understand and recognise the issues, and collectively bring
about change.
All five organisations are committed to transparency and accountability and will continue to report
publicly on progress. This work will continue to be led at CEO level.
Sally Munday, CEO UK Sport
Tim Hollingsworth, CEO Sport England
Stewart Harris, CEO sportscotland
Sarah Powell, CEO Sport Wales
Antoinette McKeown, CEO Sport Northern Ireland
Click here to read more about the five common themes.
Click here and here to read the reports.