Abstract

This chapter examines the origins and current emphases of sports supply in the UK, drawing primarily upon economic theory. In this regard the chapter focuses upon sports development as deriving from the interplay between rational individual agents and the form by which the supply of resources to meet their needs emerges. The implication of this discussion will be that markets and their role in sports development can only be understood in connection with the development of other forms of organisation, which includes the public sector provision of services and facilities and voluntary formal organisations such as club-sport systems, as well as entirely informal activity. To facilitate this discussion the next section briefly discusses the definition of sports development. Some basic economic concepts are then introduced as bases of an economic explanation of how and why sports have developed as they have. The subsequent section then explores how regulatory and policy changes have taken place in the UK, as vehicles for promoting organisational change, and indicating how, from an economic perspective, policy tensions can be said to exist that will affect future sports development. Einleitung