Ed Warner: Activity vouchers can solve post-Covid sport participation problem October 21, 2021 I addressed a bunch of politicians, advisors and sports industry types at a Westminster Forum this week on the challenges facing sport and the public funding priorities as we come out of the pandemic. The risk on these occasions is that you get caught in an echo chamber, telling the audience what it already thinks [...]
Ed Warner: What I would do if I were in charge of English cricket October 14, 2021 This week, Ed Warner writes an open letter to the ECB, which runs English cricket, as it begins its search for a new chair of the governing body. Dear ECB, I see you’ve parted company with your chair, Ian Watmore, after only a year in the job. I’d like to toss my hat in the [...]
No Pac-Man in Paris, but does esports really need the Olympics? October 7, 2021 Only four years ago, esports looked destined to be included as exhibition events at the Paris 2024 Olympics, en route to full medal inclusion at Los Angeles 2028. But the pandemic took the momentum out of their advocates’ lobbying and the success of the new sports showcased at Tokyo appears to have put paid to [...]
Why athletics needs a silver bullet in the form of private investment September 30, 2021 The results are just in, and they don’t make for easy reading. World Athletics posted a small financial surplus in 2020, but only because Russia coughed up a fine for its doping misdemeanours. W hat’s worrying is the long steady decline in the reserves of track and field’s governing body. For the sake of the [...]
West Ham United and the London Stadium have been good for each other – legacy chiefs should do a new deal to give the club more control September 2, 2021 This isn’t the article I expected to write; I went back to the London Stadium to bury it not to praise it. Instead, I came away with a deeper understanding of just what a valuable asset West Ham United Football Club has become. Nine years on from London 2012 and four from the World Athletics [...]
Former UK Athletics chair Ed Warner: My heart says Team GB track and field stars can deliver against the odds at Tokyo 2020 Olympics July 29, 2021 “Head not heart” was the mantra I lived by going into an Olympics, such is the jeopardy in international athletics. With 214 member nations within World Athletics, experience says that Great Britain needs at least two genuine podium prospects for every medal the team might actually bring home from any global track and field competition. [...]
Why UK Sport’s funding review should mean less money for athletics, cycling, swimming, rowing, sailing and equestrian August 27, 2018 Katherine Grainger is a poster girl for Britain’s funding of elite sport, winning medals at each of the five Olympics since John Major ushered in the current highly successful support system. Now she is chair of UK Sport, although but a boardroom novice, and must make a pair of connected decisions that will define the [...]