Following London’s incredible staging of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, some of the world’s most iconic sporting moments have taken place in the UK, cementing the country’s global reputation as a successful host of the biggest one-off and annual sporting events.
Since National Lottery funding began in 1999, we have invested £88m to deliver more than 300 major events across 84 sports Why we invest in major sporting events
Pinnacle Events
This programme aims to attract the most important global events, to world leading standards in a way that showcases the best of the UK’s brand values as a host nation: Quality, Innovation, Prestige and Passion.
The Pinnacle events programme brings together mega events which are funded by Government on a one-off basis, alongside UK Sport’s National Lottery funding which supports World Championships and certain European Championships.
The National Lottery funded element of this programme has the following key objectives to help prioritise hosting targets:
- Create extraordinary moments
- Reach, inspire and unite the nation
- Strengthen UK’s place in the world
- Drive economic impact
These objectives are reflective of UK Sport’s mission to create the greatest decade of extraordinary sporting moments; reaching, inspiring and uniting the nation.
Performance Events
The primary objectives of this programme are to support athletes and sports in their Olympic, Paralympic or Commonwealth Games qualification, classification and preparation. Funding is prioritised on the ability of events to deliver against these three objectives.
The focus for this programme is those disciplines supported by a UK Sport Performance Programme and Commonwealth Sports in the pre-Games year.
The scope for this programme includes World and European Championships, Premium World Circuit, World Junior and top tier leagues to be hosted in the funding cycle.
Pinnacle and Performance Events
Prior to each event hosting target being developed into a bid, we work with the specific sport and host location on their detailed business plan and budget. This is reviewed internally before being proposed to the UK Sport Major Events Panel. The panel then makes an investment recommendation to the UK Sport Board.
UK Sport is a deficit funder – meaning that we only consider investing National Lottery funding into events that need our financial support to be staged. We also act as the investment vehicle through which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport funds mega sporting events.
When the funding award is agreed for an event and the bid won, a UK Sport Major Events Advisor will continue to work with the sport to support the planning and delivery phases of the event.