The possible imminent collapse of Setanta and the impact it will have on sport in the UK

Professional sporting bodies, teams and athletes will all be watching the news this week with great interest to see what is going to happen to Setanta Sports. For all of you unaware of what Setanta are they are a subscriber based sports platform to which its viewers pay a monthly view to watch its collection of sports channels which feature the likes of Premier League matches, golf, boxing, rugby and more. Now you may be asking how this will effect young people who want to get in to sport but please read on to find out who this could effect you.

The way the selling of sports right goes at the moment is that the governing body say for instance The FA will sell the rights to a sports channel to show its matches live, the FA would then distribute the money to the clubs in the league which matches are being aired and keep a percentage for themselves. The problem comes is when the clubs spend the money before they get it and then the deal falls through which is the situation we find ourselves in now.

Normally when professional sporting clubs hit hard times the first things to go or to be cut back are areas that don’t make them profit so area like youth development and coaching in the community can be cut back. This then has a long term effect on the quality of coaching offered to our sporting stars of tomorrow as well as effecting the number of opportunities available to them.

Sporting bodies who were also depending on the cash from selling the rights may then also scale back any youth development work they do as an organization and promotion of the sport which again will effect the number of young people taking up the sport.

When sport is on TV it can inspire and encourage people to give it a go but if Setanta does disappear some sports and teams may become less visible here in the UK if no other broadcaster picks up the rights. To those sports where the rights do get picked it isn’t all good news as now with less potential buyers in the market it will force down the price they can sell their rights for so leaving them with less money in the future.

I hope that some how a deal can be made that helps everyone as there are so many ramifications and people who would be effected if Setanta do go under.

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Does Anything Really Change?

Does anything really change? Last week it was discussed in the news whether funding for youth related projects and schemes had actually made a noticeable or quantifiable improvement to the lives of young people or not.

It is hard when you read the headlines over the weekend of murdered teenagers to actually imagine that funding is helping but how do you gauge the national and overall success of a project when you have stories like this to contend with?

No matter how much good is done the news outlets will always highlight sensational and extreme news of the minority of young people committing crime. This will in turn lead people in to thinking that this is what young people are up to across the country.

Although we all hate figures, statistics and having to measure success I think in some cases it is needed. If you as a government are going to invest millions of taxpayers pounds they have to know they are getting a return for their money. It is hard to stop extreme cases like we have seen on the weekend but what needs to be done is to make sure that these stay isolated and minority events, it is when these incidents become the norm is when we have failed. One teenager dieing is far too many but you can’t stop wanting to better or to improve things as we only lose when we stop trying

These events need to remind us that no young person is safe and we all need to be doing are all to make sure every young person leads a safe life. We can’t rely on funding or education to solve the problems we all need to take an active role within our communities to make sure we are all safe.

When every young person has the same access to funding, education and support is when we will be able to judge change properly and see real change on a national basis. Success with young people is only temporary and we can never afford to forget it. That is why we need continual funding and continual monitoring for the improvement of young lives in the UK. Just because a project has been successful for a young person and changed their life it doesn’t necessarily mean that if support was pulled away that they would continue to be a success.

It may seem like nothing changes but it is a much better world than if funding and support was to be taken away from youth projects and programmes. Just remember that just because you may be reading the same headlines every year it doesn’t mean change isn’t being made or happening.

Do you think anything is changing in regards to the success of support for youth related projects and programme? We here at Talented Young People would love to know your views and you can share them by joining in our topic of the week by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=457

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com