Audience Segmentation Research - Olympic and Paralympic Sport

UK Sport is the UK's leadership organisation for high-performance sport.

The athletes and sports we work with create extraordinary sporting moments that enrich lives, uniting the millions of people who experience them. We believe in the timeless power of sport - a force for good, inspiring hope and happiness.

Our strategic plan for 2017-2021 is coming to a close and a new cycle begins in April 2021. We intend to create another decade of extraordinary sporting moments enabled by strategic leadership, collaboration across the sporting community and through accountable investment of Exchequer and National Lottery funds.

We believe we need to build a broader and more deeply engaged supporter base for Olympic and Paralympic sport, but we don't know which public audiences have the propensity to engage or how best to reach, connect and engage with them.

We see Olympic and Paralympic supporters as potentially engaging through one or more of the following themes/beahviours (data from Sport England Active Lives September 2020):

• Watch: Attending live Olympic/Paralympic sporting events - 11.4 million adults (16+) in England attended at least two live sports events in the last year.

• Play: Playing sport at any level - 15.3 million adults (16+) in England have taken part in sporting activities at least twice in the last 28 days. UK Sport is particularly interested in building the talent potential of the future for Team GB and Paralympics GB and so driving interest in and participation in Olympic and Paralympic Sport is essential.

• Live: Part of their life - 6 million adults (16+ in England have volunteered in sport at least twice in the last year) and there are 14.4 million unique individuals ('fans') across British sport online (Source: GWI - UK market only September 2019). Seeking to build this pool of advocates is essential for the longevity of Olympic & Paralympic sport.

In isolation, these numbers indicate that there could be a healthy supporter base for Olympic and Paralympic sport between Games where individuals engage across at least one of these themes.

However, we do not have a clear understanding of the different audience segments that exist in Great Britain (when considering audience size, demographics, psychographics, geographics, affluence, audience needs and behaviours), the intersectionality of the aforementioned themes/beahviours relating to sport e.g. (not all fans play sport and not all participants are fans), or how different segments interact with Olympic and Paralympic sport(s) more broadly e.g. are there multi-sport Olympic fans or instead single-sport fans that don't engage with any other sports?

If we are to truly realise our ambition to reach, unite and inspire more people every day, we need robust audience insights to underpin Olympic and Paralympic sport's public engagement activity and enable us to identify priority audience segments for the decade ahead.

Additional information: Suppliers wishing to tender are requested to register their expression of interest by emailing research@uksport.gov.uk by 5th November 2020, along with any clarification questions they may have in accordance with paragraph 8 of this ITT.