Rachel Reeves to pledge £86m per year to Britain’s Olympic funding in Budget announcement
Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic funding from the Government is expected to increase by £9 million per year for Los Angeles 2028 in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Budget.
The anticipated £86 million-per-year pledge will be a major relief for UK Sport, but it remains to be seen whether a 10 per cent uplift will fully satisfy recent athlete complaints.
After the delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, Boris Johnson announced a £77.4 million-a-year package – an increase of 44 per cent on post-Rio 2016 funding – although that pledge only covered three years.
Another increase will be celebrated within most sporting boardrooms as spending in the next cycle has been scrutinised more intensely than ever.
The Telegraph reported in August how the Treasury initially pushed back on demands for immediate sign-off after Paris while the new Government’s audit of public spending was ongoing.
Concern has been growing among British medal hopes since, but the Chancellor’s long-awaited Budget is expected to promise funding will be available to ensure the UK secures a top five medal berth in LA.
A Treasury source said: “This funding will be a clear commitment to investing in Britain’s sporting future – to realising the aspirations and potential of so many talented people across the UK and breaking down barriers to opportunity from the grass roots right through to elite competition.”
The anticipated £86 million-per-year settlement for funding body UK Sport is expected to be guaranteed until 2028-29 – meaning the government is providing £344 million during the current cycle and into Brisbane 2032. The total pledge for the last three year cycle was £232 million.
UK Sport – which relies on Government and UK Lottery funding as part of its model for athletes – had been seeking a “small uplift” in the next settlement.
Fears of elite coaches joining rivals
The Government plans to make clear it “recognises the scale of Team GB’s achievements since climbing from 36th in the medal table at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, with Britain the only nation outside of the US and China to win more than 60 medals at each of the last four Olympic Games”.
“There is also real momentum in the Paralympics coming off a second-place medal table finish in Paris last month,” a Whitehall insider added.
In 2017, the gross value added (GVA) of Olympic and Paralympic sports in the UK was almost £25 billion. Team GB won 65 medals at Paris 2024, beating their tally from Tokyo by one. The total matches the team’s medal haul from London 2012 and is the joint-third-highest for Team GB at a single Games behind Rio 2016 (67 medals) and London 1908 (146). But Britain did get eight fewer golds than they did three years ago in Tokyo and 14 golds was only good enough for seventh in the medal table, GB’s lowest placing since Athens 2004.
Over the previous 16-year period in which Team GB have achieved 60-plus medals at consecutive Games, the Government had made spending pledges within a week of the Olympics coming to an end.
There has been a nervousness within British sport about elite coaches and staff being picked off by rivals comes after Mel Marshall, who worked with Adam Peaty for almost two decades, said she was relocating to Australia to further her career.
The Budget pledge comes a week after a survey indicated hundreds of Britain’s athletes feared they may be unable to afford to compete through to LA.
When questioned by the British Elite Athlete Association (BEAA), some 64 per cent of the 189 athletes surveyed said they would quit their careers if the money they receive did not improve. A further 21 per cent said they would be unsure about continuing if their funding stayed the same. Only 15 per cent agreed they could carry on with their current funding award. The BEAA says the findings reveal “a significant threat to British sport”.
Athletes are funded through grants, called Athlete Performance Awards (APAs), which are intended to allow them to focus on their sport. For the Paris 2024 cycle, the maximum APA was £28,000 per year. The BEAA estimates the average athlete earns less than £22,500 annually.