This paper has been written as a discussion document for sport leaders. Deliberately provocative, it is intended to stimulate new thinking about spot in Canada at a time when there is a broad-based consensus that change is needed. The opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sport Alliance of Ontario or its Board of Directors.

The so-called Canadian sport system is really no system at all. As Sydney silver medallist Caroline Brunet said, "The thing is, when I hear people use the word 'system', I think, is there a system? Are we going from Point A to Point B? Do we have a plan? If they get one, then actually we'll be at least on our way to something."

As a country, through a lack of innovation, planning, co-ordination and funding, we are failing not only our Olympic athletes but every citizen who could benefit from participation in sport. This paper is intended to address that problem, by offering some new perspective and new solutions to the old problems (and old thinking) bedevilling Canadian sport.

Who's In Charge Here, Anyway?

The dictionary defines "system" as �orderly combination or arrangement of parts, elements, etc into a whole; especially, such combination according to some rational principle.� The Canadian sport system is not a system. There is no shared direction, nor even a communications mechanism, which unites sport organizations at different levels. Without connection, communication, and coordination, sport in Canada will never realize its potential.

There is not even a single definition of what "sport" is, or how it relates to recreation, fitness, active living, and so on. If an individual pursues a physical activity for a competitive end, we call it "sport"; the same activity, pursued for pleasure, is called "recreation"; if pursued for health and fitness, we call it "fitness". So, we have evolved whole separate organizations, at different levels, and with different funding (but all from the same taxpayer) to serve different individuals who may be participating in the same activity.

Let�s begin by agreeing that our objective is not to try to enhance the Canadian sport system by injecting cash- because there is no system. Let�s agree to create a Canadian sport system by reforming sport organizations using the best practices available in business today, by connecting the strengthened organizations together, and by providing shared direction toward a common goal of excellence at all levels, for all Canadians.

When Does the Competition Start?

Competition is inherent in sport, so it is surprising that most sport organizations fail to extend principles of competition to the business aspects of their operation. In business, viability is based on offering products and services with value to customers who are prepared to pay for value. Business, where companies rise or fall on the basis of their ability to compete , must be the model for a new Canadian sport system.

When government at the federal and provincial levels took sport organizations "from the kitchen table to the boardroom table" in the 1960's and 70's, small, volunteer associations became slightly larger, professionally staffed, handmaidens of government. At that time government had a broader vision for sport, but over the years the vision has narrowed. Today there is �photo-op� funding designed to produce short term results: at times the focus is high performance, at times participation and fitness, at times national unity through sport. Sport sees government as the customer, and government sees sport as an instrument of social policy. The true customers- sport participants- are pushed into the margin or co-opted into the endless rounds of subsidy hunting. Small wonder that the perennial cry of sport association members is, �our association does nothing for us!�

For Canadian sport to make true progress, organizations at all levels must be clear about who their customers are, what value they offer customers, and who they compete against. From community to national levels, organizations think they are in the high performance athlete development business. They see their role as the identification and grooming of top performers who can climb to the next level, and �all the rest� are treated with benign neglect. The implicit assumption is that the all-important development of high performance athletes is inherently unprofitable, so ignoring the quality and value needs of the broad base of customers and depending on government subsidy to make ends meet is OK. Canada's experience over the past twenty years shows how wrong this assumption is.

Canada�s National Sport Organizations (NSOs) have been conditioned by government funding pressure to focus narrowly on elite athlete development. Community sport is divided between providing participation opportunities and building winners. Provincial and Territorial Sport Organizations (PTSOs) straddle the middle ground, torn between satisfying the NSO demand for athlete development, and the government funding-partner demand for increased participation. Often, PTSOs �specialize� in either athlete development or participation, but strength in athlete development comes at the expense of the NSO, while strength in participation is at the expense of the community club network. As a result, far more energy goes into fending off the conflicting demands of �partners� than into creating quality programs for which customers are willing to pay a fair, unsubsidized price.

In truth, community/regional sport exists to provide quality sport programs- that is, � value�, to participants. National sport, or �elite sport�, provides profile, advertises the brand, and recruits sponsors. The distinction between the roles of community/regional and national sport is key, for it determines the strategy of, and proper relationship between, the different levels. Ford Motor Company does not go stock-car racing because winning at NASCAR is an end in itself- it does so to sell millions of cars at its local dealerships. Seen in this light, national sport organizations are subordinate to local/regional sport; elite sport helps drive customers into club programs, building a stronger sport brand and (it is hoped) a healthier, happier population.

Reliance on government subsidy has turned the priorities and operation of Canadian sport upside down. The mass market of participants is, for the most part, quite able to pay a fair price for a quality service at the community level. The amount Canadians spend on sports equipment dwarfs what they are willing to spend for participation in the activity itself. If a fair fee-for-value proposition could be realised at the community level, a bigger share of revenue could sustain the development and administrative effort at the provincial level and the sport-brand marketing effort at the national level. The PTSO effort would then be correctly focused on improving the quality of community programs and the ability of community organizations to attract participants, while the NSO, better aligned with and supported by its base, could focus on the marketing of the sport brand through elite performance. Local and provincial government funding could be focused on helping those who truly need assistance to be involved in sport.

Experimenting On Our Children

In Ontario, nearly 70% of coaches have never taken part in formal coach education such as the National Coaching Certification Program. The majority of elementary and high school teachers have neither physical education degrees nor NCCP certification. About 70% of club coaches work with athletes between 6 and 12 years old, and all teacher coaches work with youth. In other words, most coaches learn to be coaches by a trial and error process of experimenting on children.
It is likely that this phenomenon is responsible for much of the drop-out rate in sport as children discover that sport isn�t fun after all and parents vote with their feet. But, poor quality programming is only one problem. Those that stick with sport are often in for an even rougher ride.

Since the business of sport is assumed to be the athlete development business, kids are expected to move up or move out. Compare the number of participants in house-league hockey or soccer programs for 18-year-olds compared to 8-year-olds. Where did all the older kids go? A few moved into competitive, high performance programs. Some moved away from club sport, into municipal programs. Most moved out, as they (or their parents) became bored or dissatisfied, or when they could slip out from parental control at about age 13 and spend their time with peers. And when high school ends, what little sport participation is left ends as well. Despite the well-known increase in drop-out rate among youth beginning at age 13-14, little creative energy has been spent on finding solutions. The tremendous waste of talent is just accepted.

By improving our organizations, we could improve program quality and keep participants longer. By connecting our organizations, we could �recycle� youth leaving one stream, by enticing them into another. Tired of hockey? Try snowboarding. Do you know any other kind of business which would accept 60% waste? That's how many Canadians are reckoned to be too inactive to reap any health benefit from sport and recreation- 60% of the population.

Sport organizations which focus on the important customer- the participant- and the important objective- quality- will be able to connect, build profitable partnerships, and minimize this waste. Organizations which wait for a government cheque so they can do �athlete development� will not.

Sport organizations need to agree to partner with each other (not just affiliate as members) for mutual benefit. The first challenge is to fully integrate all the interests of all the customers and organizations at all the levels into a matrix which can work for everyone- in other words, to connect sport. Then, the next challenge: to develop the capacity of sport organizations so they can deliver the goods following a business model, by paying attention to quality and price.

The World Is Connected, So Why Not Sport?

Business uses the power of connected information flow to collect and maintain real-time information on customers, suppliers and competitors. The ability to collect information and make decisions in seconds has also made it possible to market products to highly targeted groups at low cost in seconds�and as a result the pressure to create and deliver new products has increased. Product development cycles once measured in years, then months, are now measured in days. Simply put, these days everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Except in sport.

In sport, for some of the reasons discussed above, nobody knows what anybody else is doing. Organizations at all levels spend an inordinate amount of time reinventing the wheel and duplicating effort. Clubs in the same town don't talk to each other. So it goes at provincial and national levels: the vertical lines of communication (club to PSO to NSO) are weak and the lateral lines (club to club, NSO to NSO) are almost non-existent.

In business, driven by the need for competitive advantage, there is always a search for best practices- ways to do things better. There is an entire training industry, with thousands of seminars attended and books sold across Canada each day. Who is the sport equivalent of Tom Peters? What are the sport equivalents of Harvard Business Review or Fast Company magazine? Did you ever hear of a sport guru?
Sport needs to be connected. It needs to be able to draw on a repository of best practices so it can stop duplicating effort. It needs a new paradigm, one every sport leader knows about and wants to pattern her organization after. The next revolution in sport will be when multi-sport organizations make the lateral connections in sport, and when the newly connected nodes begin to talk to each other. New Community Sport Councils will help maximize volunteer time and efficiency and improve program quality at the local level. Provincial Sport Federations will link Community Sport Councils into province-wide networks, and a new Canadian Sport Agency will coordinate organizations nationally- and they'll all know what each other is doing.

This is essential. It's impossible to create an integrated sport delivery model unless organizations know what they're integrating, who they're integrating with, and what they will get out of it. Sport has to be connected.

The new focus of competition between sport organizations must be competition to connect. Organizations that connect with their true customers will learn how to serve them with quality programs, and they will grow stronger. Sports that connect and develop integrated, co-operative, multi-level plans which stretch from community to international levels will grow stronger. Association Boards and staff who connect to what's going on in business and management and put it to use will grow stronger. Sport businesses that can demonstrate the direct connection to their members will attract a much larger share of corporate support than ever before, and they will grow stronger. The first organization that connects, wins! Even better news: every organization that connects, wins!

Connecting makes organizations stronger- and stronger organizations make better connections. The new race will be the race to connect. Best of all, connection is not expensive. It just requires the vision, leadership and will needed to make it happen.

It's Not The Money, Stupid!

The big obstacle to this strength-through-connection model exists within the minds of the leadership of Canadian sport. Simply injecting more funding into Canadian sport will not make the organizations stronger; probably it will reinforce the status quo and keep them weak. New funding without a new mission, new core values and a new way of working will inevitably be wasted. Sport leaders need to get over the funding issues and look critically at the strength of their own organizations.

What is needed is a consensus among sport leaders, from community to national levels, that job number one is to build strong sport organizations. Sport leaders need to agree to focus on their most important customers, the participant/athletes. They need to provide quality programs which offer value, attract new participants and retain existing ones. They need to think in terms of multiple bottom lines- a profitable financial bottom line, a strong customer satisfaction bottom line, and an athlete development bottom line- and they need to develop measurement tools to show everyone how well they are doing. Governance, strategic planning, quality improvement and staff/volunteer empowerment models are all readily accessible in the business world; sport needs to draw from that pool of best practices. Sport organizations need to accept that they will learn, grow, and strengthen through a process of connection.

Stronger organizations are better places for athletes to be. When athletes enter the sport stream at the community level, they (or their parents) are consumers. They must exercise their right as consumers, to purchase from the organizations which provide the highest quality product- in other words, to participate in a sport club or program which respects their rights and their needs and offers value. Free choice in search of quality will reward both participants and organizations- this is the true meaning of �athlete-centered�. At the elite level, where national organizations market the sport-brand in order to drive sales at the community level, the athlete must be regarded as a partner. If the elite athlete cannot succeed, the entire sport suffers, from the NSO right down to the community level.

For examples, look abroad. In 1999 the British government released a visionary plan for the revitalization of sport called �A Sporting Future For All�. The plan addresses the entire spectrum of sport participation, under five broad headings: Sport in Education, Sport in the Community, Sporting Excellence, Modernization, and Implementation. Intergovernmental co-operation, and co-operation between schools, local councils, clubs, sport associations and professional sport- in a word, connection- is a key to the strategy. There is considerably more investment, but it is allocated where it will matter the most: the development and upgrading of facilities and the creation of 110 Specialist Sports Colleges connected to a network of United Kingdom Sport Institute centres are leading features of the plan.

The Canadian Government must lead the way if Canada is to become an "over-achiever", but not by throwing more money at the problem. More money will be needed, that is certain, but clear thinking and a clear vision must precede a new direction, and tools will be needed to stimulate and focus clear thinking. Tax- and lottery-based investment should flow to sport organizations which show the strategic thinking and capacity to change and to connect, not simply to the large or apparently (and temporarily) successful.

Can You Make a Business Out Of High Performance Athlete Development?

Other than federal government funding, the financial mainstays of National Sport Organizations are sponsorship of national and international events "owned" by NSOs, sponsorship of national teams, and affiliation fees from provincial members. Save for a few cases where the event or team properties have mass appeal (figure skating, tennis), the revenues from such sponsorships are relatively small. By contrast, the costs of high performance development are very high: international travel of squads of athletes, coach and support staff salaries, equipment, sport science and psychology costs, are all relatively expensive. As a result, most NSOs have difficulty in doing an adequate job of athlete preparation, and the preparation effort is often focused on the current (senior) national team to the detriment of "up and coming" athletes.

It's clear that the current approach is not working well. A very small, very expensive, largely unknown group of elite athletes who spend a significant amount of time away from home is not an attractive prospect to Canada's corporate sponsors, many of whom are already dismayed at the lack of professionalism and fragmentation they find in the sport sector. So, is increased government funding of high performance sport the only possible answer?

No. In a system with some shared purpose and central direction, an alternative future could be created. For example, virtually all elite Canadian athletes and sponsorable properties (e.g. championships and Games) from all sports could be pooled together into the "Canadian Sport Partnership". The mission of the Partnership would be excellence in Canadian sport. Corporate Canada would co-sponsor the entire Partnership, much as they are willing to sponsor major Games (or bids for Games). There would be no exclusive categories. The pool of athletes and properties would be national, so there would be something for each sponsor at any given time, and individual sponsors could also "adopt" specific athletes and properties which met their local needs. The project would be large enough to permit central, professional marketing and co-ordination, which would enhance value for the partners; projects such as national/regional television coverage of amateur sport, guest appearances including school appearances, and a general increase in visibility of athletes and sport would be greatly facilitated. Revenue from the Partnership would be pooled among the sport organizations and athletes that participate.

Some would object that competing corporate interests would demand exclusivity, making such a Partnership unworkable. Not so. Many NSOs and some PSOs have sponsor pools which work along these lines.

A second stream of revenue supporting high performance development should come from fees generated at the community level. When NSOs provide value, in the form of improved development programs and advertising materials to the community level, community sport will contribute financially to the brand marketing effort called elite sport.

A third stream can come from an improved connection with professional sport, which should invest in a more direct, more substantial way in the development of athletes through the amateur ranks, as well as taking a much more significant corporate donor/sponsor role in the support of youth sport programs. In the United States, the Memphis Redbirds Triple-A baseball franchise provides a unique example: incorporated as a not-for-profit, all surplus proceeds from the operation of this professional team flow to inner-city baseball programs.

It's all a dream. It could never exist in today's fragmented sport community. It can only exist if sport is connected: connected internally and connected to the corporate community.

A Connected Future for Sport

What will the new Canadian sport system look like in practice?

The current vertical hierarchy of community, provincial and national organizations will be transformed into a mutually-supporting loop structure. Community sport, whether in school, club or recreation department, will exist to draw in new participants and retain existing ones with high-quality programs led by skilled and trained leaders. Provincial organizations will support the community with innovative sport programs and leadership training opportunities, as well as by organising intermediate level activities which will provide the next steps for athletes on the path to competitive excellence. National organizations will provide the elite development and competitive opportunities which will allow Canada�s athletes to shine on the international stage, and this in turn will excite and attract new participant at the community level. A share of increased community revenue generated by offering value to participants and their parents, will be channelled into the national team effort, the better to market the sport brand; in return, the national level will recognize that the purpose of international excellence is to support community-level growth, which it will stimulate by sharing athlete development �technology� and promotional resources. These connections will be formally recognised with a framework of contractual obligation between the various organizations.

New lateral connections will be forged between organizations of the same level. At the community level, local school, municipal and club sport organizations will work together in the context of Community Sport Councils. These Councils will create opportunities for resource sharing, fund raising, marketing and balancing of facility use and management. Multi-sport initiatives will be facilitated, including shared facilities and regional training centres. Although community sport organizations will continue to compete for market share, waste will be minimised because participants leaving one activity will be encouraged to migrate to other activities within the community network. Similarly, sharing of resources between organizations at provincial and national levels will be enabled to reduce duplication of effort and funding.

New organizations will be empowered, or created if necessary, to build and maintain the connections and standards. At the national level, a new agency will be created by amalgamating games organizations (COA, Canada Games, etc) and development organizations (Coaching Association, Centre for Ethics in Sport, etc). The new �super-organization� will set strategic direction and coordinate sport development, ethics, Games, and marketing efforts. At the provincial/territorial level, the function of existing federations will be reformed and expanded to include a strategic and coordinating role similar to that of the new national agency. These provincial/territorial federations will also be charged with the development and maintenance of the network of community or regional councils.

Government will step forward; government investment will increase to a level consistent with the desire of Canadians to have the best sport system in the world, one which provides opportunities for all and supports excellence for our high performance athletes. At the same time, government will step back; investment will be made strategically, by maintaining a pool of investment capital from which the national agency (in the case of federal funding) or the provincial/ territorial federations (in the case of provincial/territorial funding) will offer development loans (not grants) to NSOs and PSOs. These loans, like other business loans, will be made with the expectation of return on investment. Governments will get out of the business of program delivery altogether, leaving areas like coaching, provincial/territorial Games, and athlete funding to the central sport organizations. Sport will be supported through favourable legislation which provides tax incentive for investment, links health spending to illness prevention and, at the provincial/territorial level, requires improved physical education programs in schools. A new national-provincial lottery-based Sport Fund, featuring federal matching of provincial lottery-based funds allocated to sport, will be created to support the development or modernization of sport facilities, the creation of a network of specialised Sport Schools, and regional networks of Sport Centres connected to the existing network of National Sport Centres. Industry Canada and its Strategis web site also provides a model and a glimpse of what government will do for sport.

Everywhere, sport will look to business for models and expertise. Organizations will compete based on the value of the products and services they offer, and on their ability to develop their staff, paid or volunteer, to deliver quality. They will race to connect with customers, with other sport organizations, with corporations, and with other not-for-profit agencies in partnerships for mutual advantage. The strength of these connections and partnerships will determine their growth and success.

Such sweeping change will inevitably be feared and resisted by those who are comfortable in the current system, debilitated and dysfunctional though it may be. Nonetheless, these changes are inevitable. Leaders with vision are already moving in this direction. Private businesses offering quality sport programs and products are already beginning to �encroach� on what was the exclusive territory of the volunteer. We can move together and accomplish this revolutionary change quickly, or we can continue to resist and suffer with what we have today. Canadians deserve better.

We have argued here that Canadian sport needs to operate like a business at all levels, using business-like performance measures and contracts, but more importantly, by focusing on true customers, quality and value. We have also argued that the path to follow is one of connection, developing partnerships and clearly-defined relationships that lead to organizational learning, synergy and mutual growth. Connection will result in learning, and learning will result in strength. Unified by a common vision, connected in a common network, sport organizations at all levels and of all types can learn to compete effectively- remembering that the Latin roots of the word �compete� mean "to strive together". We can all strive together to create a playground-to-podium system which will reward excellence while offering greater value to all Canadians.

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