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experience of evaluating project effectiveness, in both an international and Russian context – as well as develop approaches to the selection of promising development areas, including identification and evaluation of effects. To address these problems, the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation conducted a study in 2022 aimed at identifying the effects achieved through the implementation of social sports projects and summarizing the approaches used to evaluate them.

Ilya Solntsev

Doctor of Economics, Head of the Department of Management and Marketing in Sports, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation

Natalia Kosheleva

Consultant on monitoring and evaluation of social programs and projects, president of the Association of Specialists in Program and Policy Evaluation (ASPPE)

SOCIAL EFFECTS OF SPORTS PROJECTS

Projects implemented in the sphere of physical culture and grassroots sport address a wide range of problems that go beyond the category of “sports”: a number of changes occur in the economy, education and professional sphere, adaptation and socialization, and demography. Sports projects also affect people’s well-being, by changing crime and disease rates. Such a broad range of impacts resulted in the creation of the “Sport for Development” concept, which emerged in the middle of the 20th century. The first scholar to set up its theoretical basis was the American psychologist Gordon Allport (1954), who suggested that contact between different groups of people with different characteristics, including gender, ethnicity and race, was the most effective means of fighting racism, prejudice, and discrimination.

Based on this theoretical framework, Alexis Lyras (2011) suggested that sport initiatives could promote personal development and social change through the use of non-traditional management methods and by combining sports with cultural and educational activities. A number of analytical portals concept are dedicated to the “Sports for Development” concept, for example: Sport for Development[70], and Sport and Development[71], along with multiple studies by global organizations such as UNICEF[72] and the UN[73]. The impact of sports on the society as a whole can be summarized via the UN Sustainable Development Goals[74].

The effects generated by sports projects can be classified into positive and negative, and by the direction of the impact – in the context of the social sphere, health and economy (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Effects generated by sports projects

Source: Vladimir Potanin Foundation. (2022). Social Sports: measuring the effectiveness. Methods for evaluating the effectiveness of social projects in sports.

The positive social and health effects of sports are well summarized and, more importantly, quantified in the work by Larissa Davies et al. (2019):

1. Exercise in sports leads to a 1 % increase in education (11–18 years).

2. Graduates who had engaged in University sports earn 18 percent more a year on average than those who had not.

3. Exercise leads to a 1 % decrease in criminal incidents among men aged 10–24.

4. Participation in sports is associated with higher subjective well-being.

5. Volunteering in sports is associated with improved individual subjective well-being and greater satisfaction with life. The time spent by volunteers is equivalent in value to an average hourly wage.

6. Athletes are 14.1 % more likely to report good health than non-athletes. Sports and moderate-intensity physical exercise in adults, among other things, reduce the risk of:

• coronary heart disease and stroke in active men and women by 30 % on average (between 11 and 52 %);

• breast cancer in active women by 20 % (between 10 and 30 %);

• colorectal cancer by 24 %;

• type 2 diabetes by 10 %;

• dementia by 30 % (between 21 and 52 %).

Researchers from New Zealand reached similar conclusions[75]:

• 84 % of respondents agreed that sports help develop important life skills such as teamwork and cooperation;

• for New Zealanders who participate in sports, the level of well-being increases 59 %;

• sports help develop social skills and make new friends (including for migrants);

• high-performance sports help instill a sense of pride in the country and contribute to national identity;

• physical activity and sports reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases (7.9 %), type 2 diabetes (9.8 %), dementia (7.7 %), breast cancer (13.1 %), and stomach cancer (14.1 %);

• sports and recreation provide 53,000 jobs and contribute $4.9 billion to GDP annually.

A broad range of impacts resulted in the creation of the “Sport for Development” concept. It was first described by the American psychologist Gordon Allport.

In terms of the impact of sports on the economy, Europe offers noteworthy experience[76]. For example, in 2012, the gross domestic product (GDP) associated with sports was EUR 279.7 billion, or 2.12 % of the total GDP in the EU. In addition, 5.67 million workers can be attributed to the sports industry, which is 2.72 % of the total number. In other words, one in 47 Euros and one in 37 employees in the EU are directly related to sports. These figures were derived from costoutput tables for sports based on national Sport Satellite Accounts.

Indirect multipliers were also used in the calculations, taking into account that each business needs the raw materials from other industries to make its products and/or provide services. Multipliers show how much output from other sectors is needed to produce a certain commodity. For example, producing a sports car requires seats, which in turn requires textiles, etc. The magnitude of multipliers depends primarily on the structure of economic ties between the original sector and the other industries. The more sectors are interconnected, the higher the multipliers. Applying multipliers to direct effects generates indirect effects. For example, if a soccer stadium costs 30 million euros to build (direct effect), and the construction sector reports a multiplier of 1.8, the indirect effect would be (1.8–1.0) x 30, that is, 24 million euros. Note that the supply chain involves national enterprises as well as foreign countries, but the primary effects for the country depend only on the import-adjusted costs.

In terms of economic effects, it is also necessary to consider the athletes’