UK Sport is the lead government agency for major sporting events at the UK level. We work closely with our sporting and regional partners to ensure that the UK successfully bids for and stages a range of the world’s biggest international sporting events.
Our flagship programme is #EveryRoadtoRio – a group of major international events that are of national strategic importance to the UK, and that represent the pinnacle of global competition in each respective sport. Our Gold Event Series is focused on:
- Supporting and profiling high performance success for British athletes
- Creating high-profile opportunities to help engage people with sport
- Driving a positive economic benefit for communities across the UK
Through the Gold Event Series, UK Sport will invest over £40m of National Lottery funding in support of a £150m programme to host major international sporting events in the UK from 2013-2023. To achieve this, we work closely with a network of sporting and regional partners across the UK to develop strong multi-tiered funding partnerships. Alongside this, a comprehensive range of support services is also provided to ensure that major events hosted in the UK are delivered to a world-leading standard.
UK Sport has three main roles in the area of major events:
Strategic
UK Sport works with the National Governing Bodies to develop and agree the UK’s list of future major event hosting targets. We share this list with the major host cities, regions and nations across the UK, and help to broker hosting relationships between our sporting and regional partners. We also support the process of major event venue identification and selection across the UK.
Financial
UK Sport invests Lottery Funding to enable the bidding and staging of strategically important international sporting events to be hosted in the UK as part of our Gold Event Series. We also invest into significant one-off major sporting events on behalf of the Department of Culture Media and Sport. We make our investments ahead the bidding process, and we spend a significant amount of time helping to develop robust event business plans and budgets to determine the appropriate level of investment into each event.
See which events UK Sport has invested in since 2007 >
Technical
UK Sport provides advice and technical support to the events that we fund, as well as the UK’s major event hosting system. We sit on the Boards of the major events that invest into to share best practice. We operate a range of technical support programmes that help promote major events across the UK, ensure knowledge transfer between event organisers, and advise on conducting event impact research. More details on these and other technical support programmes can be found on our Event Support Services page. Our International Relations Team ensures that the UK maintains strong relationships with the international sporting community, and works closely with the Major Events Team in respect of bidding advice and support.