Action Replay – Only funding
Governments support capitalism and its ruling class in various ways, such as the police, courts and prisons. They fund transport superstructure and technological research. In addition, among other things, they provide financial support for sport as a way of boosting national ‘pride’ and patriotic fervour.
At the 1996 Summer Olympics, the British team fared very badly, winning a solitary gold medal. Not good enough, in terms of inspiring interest in the national team and endorsing flag-waving. The response was the establishment the following year of UK Sport, a government agency that invests money in Olympic and Paralympic sports. The funding comes from the government and the National Lottery, about £370m over the four-year cycle of the Olympics and Paralympics.
That may sound like a lot of money, but at the level of individual athletes it is a lot less generous. Recently the canoeist Kurts Adams Rozentals was suspended from competing by Paddle UK, the governing body. They have not said why, but he reckons it is because of his posts on OnlyFans, a social media site that hosts adult content.
Rozentals has earned over £100,000 from his posts there, which contrasts with the meagre £16,000 he was getting from UK Sport via Paddle UK. He simply couldn’t get by on that, and so started his OnlyFans site, saying, ‘I came to the realisation about why I started doing this last winter after years of struggle, years of living on the edge, my mum working 90 hours-a-week, having bailiffs at the door’ (BBC online, 29 May).
Some sports of course do better than others in terms of funding, such as over £20m for athletics in 2025–9, but just £700,000 for baseball, which doesn’t have anywhere near the same public appeal. The current focus is on the Los Angeles Games in 2028. According to UK Sport’s website, ‘Olympic and Paralympic sport occupies a special place in the hearts of the British public with more than 80% saying they were proud of Team GB and ParalympicsGB’s performances at Paris 2024.’
Besides individual athletes and sports, the organisation also supports particular sporting events and championships, such as this year’s Women’s Rugby Union World Cup, to be played at a variety of stadiums in England in August and September, which also has official sponsors too.
Other countries vary in how Olympic and Paralympic sports are funded. In the US it is largely private funding, including sponsors and commercial partners. Earlier this year the ‘philanthropist’ Ross Stevens made a $100m donation to the US Olympic Committee; he is the boss of an asset management company, so a wealthy capitalist. The Chinese government has a substantial sport budget, over £2bn a year, mainly for Olympic and Paralympic programmes.
Whether the money comes from the government or direct from capitalists, it is clear that funding for sport is an important part of boosting nationalism and loyalty to ‘one’s country’.
PB