Over the past 20 years, 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.
Through our programmes we have helped to secure and support over 140 events since 2012. Our strength is our ability to commit to the future and ensure we have a long-term programme of events.
The role we play is to conduct feasibility studies, invest in mega and major sporting events as well as enabling strategic projects and direct event support through the National Event Programme.
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.
National Events
The purpose of this small grants fund is to protect and develop national competition structures that play a critical role in the growth and health of the sport and their performance strategies. It has three investment objectives to:
- Provide and drive innovation in national competition
- Complement performance strategy
- Support the sustainable business operation and growth of the National Governing Bodies (NGB) of sport
How the investment process works
We invest National Lottery funding into major events through a defined assessment process outlined in our investment guide.
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 Consultant will continue to work with the sport to support the planning and delivery phases of the event.
National Events
The investment process for National Events is different to the Pinnacle and Performance Event Programmes and opens in ‘rounds’ for applications for specific events or strategic projects within NGBs that meet one or more of the programme objectives. NGBs considering an application should speak to their Major Events Consultant for the application documentation.
A National Events Programme guidance document is also available.