Sport Governance Principles

11 September 2020

Sport Australia has led a process to evolve the Sport Governance Principles and to co-create with the sector a multi-faceted Sport Governance Framework. This process included face-to-face co-design workshops in each State and Territory with SSOs and NSOs, Online Jams for the whole sector, and targeted design labs in three jurisdictions. In all, in excess of 380 people from more than 70 sports were involved in the co-design process.

The evolved Sport Governance Principles were developed incorporating feedback and guidance from the sector, and with an aim to facilitate meaningful change. The evolved principles are outcome rather than output focussed and provide not only recommendations for how to implement the principle, but also the behaviours and actions to enable optimal impact.

In August 2020, after a COVID-related delay, Sport Australia and its State and Territory government agency colleagues launched the Sport Governance Framework, incorporating the evolved Principles.  The webinars to launch the new Sport Governance Principles were a huge hit, with more than 600 people logging on for the six interactive forums over 10 days. View the recorded webinars.

The Governance Principles have been well received and the resources aim to help Australia’s sporting leaders face the challenges of COVID-19 and to build a stronger sporting future.

Some of the feedback received included:

• “Well done, team, on a substantial achievement. It will go a long way in ensuring that sport becomes more sustainable, better managed, and available to everyone. And congratulations on the quality of your session last night. It was very smooth, standing out like a lighthouse in the sea of uncoordinated and uninformative webinars to which we’ve all been subjected for months now!”
• “Well done on an excellent and very valuable piece of work and launch event.”
• “Excellent framework that is very user friendly that can be easily implemented for NSOs, SSOs and importantly at the local sporting club.” 

More than 40 sports were represented across the attendances at local, state and national levels. There was also strong interest from across industries including government, health and education.

Following the launches, Sport Australia commenced The Sport Governance Podcast series which focuses on a principle each week with a special guest from the Australian sport sector. These will be available to download from mid-September.

For further information on the principles or sport governance, please visit www.sportaus.gov.au/governance or contact the team at SportsGovernance@sportaus.gov.au.