Table Tennis England is asking its members to help make the sport’s voice heard in a consultation on the way elite sport is funded in the UK.
The consultation was launched to seek public feedback into the current model which sees UK Sport invest around £100 million of National Lottery and Government funding into Olympic and Paralympic sports every year. Currently only sports that will deliver multiple Olympic and/or Paralympic medals receive funding for their performance programmes.
The organisation currently does not fund all Olympic and Paralympic sports and is asking whether that should change. It wants to know whether the public thinks that Olympic medals are the only measure of success or should wider considerations be taken into account.
At present, table tennis does not receive UK Sport Olympic funding, though the British Paralympic table tennis programme is funded.
Table Tennis England is one of 11 National Governing Bodies (NGBs) which are lobbying for a rethink, under the Every Sport Matters banner.
They believe that every Olympic and Paralympic sport should receive a guaranteed base level of funding to help them finance high-performance programmes aimed ultimately at qualifying and being competitive on the Olympic and Paralympic stage. All sports deserve that opportunity.
The group of 11 NGBs, which also includes Badminton England, Archery GB and GB Wheelchair Rugby, believes this can be achieved within existing budgets without compromising medal success.
Table Tennis England Chief Executive Sara Sutcliffe said: “It is right to acknowledge that the UK Sport funding model has achieved enormous success in terms of Great Britain’s medal performance at recent Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“However, we believe giving many millions of pounds to some sports and nothing to others is divisive and that every sport deserves the opportunity to work towards achieving similar success on the world stage.
“We would encourage our members to take part in the online consultation to ensure that the views of our sport are heard.”
The consultation is in the form of an online survey which should take around 10 minutes to complete. It is open until August 19th.
Click here to take the survey: https://survey.euro.confirmit.com/wix/1/p1865845301.aspx