Winners and Losers

So SPARC have released their high performance strategy for the next 6 years. And they continue down the road of trying to pick winners from the sports we sometimes do well in and second-guessing where success is likely to come from in the future and then writing some words to justify it.

Putting government funding into sport is investment, not welfare - so sayeth SPARC ad nauseum over the last 4 years as they continue to limit the number of sports to be (meaningfully) funded out of the high performance budget.

So for the next 6 years, Athletics, Cycling, Rowing, Sailing, Swimming, Triathlon are the chosen golden childs to join the "big three" - netball, rugby and cricket, as sports that will get the lion's share of high performance funding over the next 6 years.

Well, even if sport is investment (which can be debated another time), anyone with an ounce of financial intelligence will tell you one of the fundamental principles of investment is to spread your risk. And here is where SPARC are going down a very dangerous road.

Funding high performance sport is a very high-risk business. It is difficult at the best of times to predict sporting success, with many factors outside direct control (not the least of which is your opposition and how they perform). Despite the very best of intentions, something can and often does go wrong - injury, interrupted preparation, or Suzy the waitress serving up dodgy food. Furthermore, according to SPARC there is only one measure of achieving a return on that investment, and that is winning (or an Olympic medal). Failure to win or medal means the return on the investment is zero.

So what we have is SPARC compounding a high-risk investment by adopting a high-risk strategy - limiting the number of sports who get a meaningful slice of the funding pie, and thus damaging the ability of other sports who may throw up a future champion or team to get said person/team over the hump from potential to winner.

What makes me laugh is SPARC's words that as a small nation with a limited talent pool, New Zealand needs to be "wiser, savvier, more innovative, and more strategic in our approach". Concentrating limited resources to fewer avenues in a high-risk environment is about the opposite of wise, savvy and innovative as you can get. As I've said before, it's dumb. If you want to treat sport as an invesment, learn some basic investment principles such as spreading risk to increase your chances of receiving a return.