Earlier this year in March, a book named How Canadians Communicate V: Sports raised an interesting question: Why does sports participation in Canada continue to dwindle, while viewership of sporting events rises?
The book, edited by David Taras, professor of media studies at Mount Royal University, and Carleton’s own journalism professor Christopher Waddell, explores the impact that media has had on Canadian’s attitude toward athletics.
“The book came from a conference that we held in Banff, where we brought together all the authors and everyone had a chance to talk about their subjects and what they wanted to write about,” Waddell said. “We asked everyone not to write until after the conference, so we could share all our ideas beforehand.”
An article by the Globe and Mail brought up a study on Canadian Olympic viewership, showing that the 2016 Rio Olympic Games were the most watched in Canadian history, beating the previous record holder, the London 2012 Olympics. A CBC news release revealed that in nine of the first 10 days of the Rio Games, its most-watched events each day attracted more than three million viewers, compared to 2.1 million in 2012.
While the audience number go up, the number of Canadians actually lacing up their skates or jumping in the pool and participating in their own athletics has dwindled significantly, according to Richard Gruneau of Simon Fraser University.
Gruneau, who wrote Chapter 12 of the book, entitled Goodbye Gordie Howe: Sport Participation and Class Inequality in the “Pay for Play” Society, discusses the troubling trend of declining participation in sports. He argues that “the higher levels of sport in Canada today are less accessible to the lower classes than ever. Furthermore, considerable research over the past twenty years suggests clear patterns of class exclusivity, even at the lowest levels of sports participation.”
The book mentions a Conference Board of Canada national survey in 2004, which reported a marked increased consumer spending on sport between the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
While one would probably think that an increase in money spent equals more participants, information provided by Statistics Canada’s General Social Surveys reveals the opposite is true. Gruneau writes in his chapter that “the percentage of adult Canadians, children, and youth who report being involved once a week or more in sports has decreased since 1992.”
Waddell said that sports are getting to be very expensive in today’s age.
“What [Richard’s] argument is, is that sports are getting to be very expensive, and people of modest means, even middle-income families, are unable to put their kids in sports because it costs too much money,” he said.
Waddell added the reason for this increase in spending comes from the pressure to succeed in athletics.
“The pressure comes from parents and programs, where they want quality coaches to guide their kids and become better performers,” Waddell said. “A lot of the coaches at the minor levels do it on a volunteer basis, but at some point, if you want the want the quality of coaches to improve, you have to start paying for them. The people who end up paying are the ones who can afford it.”
Other points brought up by Gruneau and Waddell on the increased cost of athletics were the professionalization of club teams at a younger age and the increased competition in youth leagues. Both are factors that require the parents to spend extra on their child’s athletics.
“Municipal and provincial government don’t put nearly as much money into recreation facilities as they used to,” Waddell said. He added the trend seems to be continuing, as low-income families find it harder to spend the required amount of money to put themselves or their kids though athletics programs.
“Some solutions would be to make public facilities cheaper and more accessible, and find other methods of funding, both for players and the programs they play for,” Waddell said.
