As part of the program of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Sport Vlaanderen organized an informal expert meeting on “(Digital) solutions to engage the unaffiliated athlete / sport practitioner” in Sport Vlaanderen Brugge (Belgium) on April 25 and 26, 2024.

During two days, 90 policy and thematic experts, academics and practitioners from all over Europe gathered in Bruges. They exchanged good practices and ideas on policies and (digital) instruments to support and enhance the sport experience of people who engage in physical activity or sport, but are not affiliated with a sport club. Shortly called: “unaffiliated athletes or sport practitioners”.

Why?

Nowadays, a societal change can be identified in people’s sport behaviour. More and more people are physically active or do some kind of sport, but figures show that the number of people affiliated to a sport club remains more or less the same in Flanders or even reduces in several European countries. As such, the increase in sport participation can be explained by a growing group of “unaffiliated” sport people, a challenging, but important group for current sport policy in and beyond Europe.

Who are they and what do they need?

As more and more people are operating outside traditional sport clubs, they have no (organisational) structure to hold on to. A big part of them never quite find their sporting taste tailored to their daily life or specific needs. “An obstacle that is frequently mentioned to not do sports, is that the sport offer is not adapted to their personal fitness and/or abilities,” states Philippe Paquay, administrator-general of Sport Vlaanderen. “This is often related to their lack of knowledge of the sport offer, an aspect to which we could contribute.”

How can we engage this group?

During the expert meeting, it became clear that digital solutions could play an important role in informing, involving and activating the group of unaffiliated sport people. Digital solutions can range from apps, to digital design of public space, data monitoring, etc. It is however important to have a clear view of what the end user needs from these solutions, and how we can tailor them to these needs. A combination of these things in addition to regular sport policy seems the right way to move forward.

Lessons learned

After two days of knowledge exchange, five lessons learned were highlighted.

Public space and nature provide many opportunities to be active in everyday life, so use active design to make public spaces and nature accessible.
Every online platform needs “a rooster” to guarantee a kickstart (i.e. something or someone to initiate or accelerate the use of the platform). Incentives and an offline strategy are important parts of this. However, if people do not find what they need, they will leave the platform.
If you build an app, develop only what the users need… you do not need an app for everything.
The lines between affiliated and unaffiliated athletes are blurring, and there is complementarity.
We need a data-driven approach to be future proof in the sport sector.

Immerse yourself once again in the atmosphere of the expert meeting with the official aftermovie: