With varsity season once again upon us, there’s no better time to consider how we can make better use of our annual sporting extravaganzas to show the value of student sport to our institutions.
Promoting the benefits and impact of student sport to university senior leaders has become a hot topic in recent years. The seemingly ever-present threat of budget cuts has become more acute for sport departments since the 2010s, when many universities absorbed at least some responsibility for their extracurricular sporting provision from SUs. Vague claims about institutional reputation or student satisfaction are no longer sufficient to justify precious financial resource.
That so many sport departments have been able to position themselves to survive years of institutional efficiencies is thanks in no small part to the fantastic work done by British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) which, among other publications, has released two key reports around which countless UK university sport departments have built their outcome reporting.
November 2020’s position statement, The value of university sport and physical activity, pulled together a literature review of academic work around student sport impacts, and established six headline “areas of strategic focus” that sport departments could use as a starting point to consider their impact. In December 2024, this was followed up by a guidance document, providing case studies and more practical ideas to guide the data gathering and reporting process.
In 2026, this could hardly be more pressing. Since the pandemic, the costs of sport facility hire, transport bookings, and staffing have all sharply increased, way beyond even a reasonable inflationary budget increase – which is more than many sport departments receive. This presents an existential threat to sport departments who are fighting to justify their value to leaders who often have bigger and more expensive fish to fry.
Making the cut
Representative sport struggles the most with these challenges. The recent trend towards widening the student sport offer to include more casual, semi-competitive, and wellbeing-related activities has been an absolute boon for sport departments and has piqued the interest of many senior university leaders.
But with these often cheaper, more accessible, and less staff-intensive activities taking the spotlight, those of us who believe in the outcomes of competitive sport in our universities now need to be more creative than ever in building a toolkit to justify its positive outcomes – so that funding keeps flowing for that more expensive sporting activity, allowing the next generation to go to battle with their teammates for their university badge.
As Dan Potter from Heriot-Watt noted in the second of BUCS’ major reports, he needed to prove to his institution that:
“The value of sport is more than wellbeing, which has already been well understood and accepted.”
And that’s where the humble varsity can help.
Show your workings
Varsity events have long provided a rich vein of case studies and anecdotes, adding colour to representations of student sport. One needs only read Jennifer Hensey’s brilliant article last month in KCL’s student newspaper ROAR, or former Nottingham registrar Paul Greatrix’s evocative report on his institution’s ice hockey varsity for this very publication, to get a flavour of the vitality of university sport. That’s not to mention the glossy videos and colourful social media content which make varsities a communication department’s dream.
The use of varsities in quantitative research around student sport is far less widespread, though, and there are several ways in which the sector’s sports leaders should consider using varsities more in their data collection.
Of course, such data collection isn’t without its challenges. By their very nature, varsity events stretch university sport departments to their limits. Waving a QR code around might understandably not be top priority when you have dozens of fixtures to organise, or thousands of students in various states of sobriety to herd onto buses. Describing the typical varsity as BUCS Wednesday on steroids doesn’t even come close.
It’s not impossible to get numbers out of busy events, though. The University of East Anglia (UEA) drew some very useful data from the bustle of open days to report on sport as a recruitment tool by harnessing session registers, for example.
While varsities aren’t mentioned in either of BUCS’ major reports, they clearly align to several of the mission statement’s six key areas. Two of the key headlines are around student recruitment by promoting the university as a brand, and retention through belonging and social inclusion. Strategically collecting student opinions around varsity time will surely illustrate sport linking to institutional pride.
Bums on seats
BUCS’ point around sport’s contribution to civic and global agendas includes a statistic about the economic benefit of university sport, further stratified in BUCS’ second piece as its “direct financial value.” Using statistics around varsity footfall and sales in campus food outlets, bars, and shops can only help show a positive impact of sport on institutions. Many universities create bespoke varsity-related t-shirts and merchandise, and larger institutions generate a modest income by selling tickets for key varsity events and venues.
While of course nowhere near the level of our American cousins, BUCS Super Rugby has recently spearheaded an albeit limited focus on UK university sports as spectator events. Varsities, however, have always pulled crowds to campuses and local sporting stadia – and can therefore show the potential of sport to provide economic benefits to institutions in these tough times, bucking the trend of sport as a traditional loss leader.
Under the BUCS headlines of graduate attainment and employability, it’s an oft-repeated statistic that those who participate in sport at university earn more, those who volunteer earn even more on top. While this might be taken in the most obvious sense to mean club committee members and those students who run casual sporting activity on campus, it’s not too far a reach to argue that student sport is helping many of those other students who enjoy their first involvement with intercollegiate sport at varsity.
The beauty of varsity is that for one day a year, sport takes over campuses and pervades areas which usually have little connection to BUCS Wednesdays or weekend leagues. Think of the student journalist who gains direct work experience photographing, live-blogging, presenting, and reporting on varsity events, or the extra student first aiders who are drafted in to cover the extra sports, catch the bug of working in a competitive environment, and enrol on a pitchside first aid course. To have the most striking impact, why not use varsity to record the engagement of those volunteers who may not be regulars, but have nevertheless benefited from student sport?
Home advantage
It’s not just in quantifying impact that varsities can be put to work for sport departments, though. These huge events provide the perfect opportunity to appeal directly to senior leaders. Many traditional institutions already do this, but encouraging vice-chancellors and their executive teams to attend varsities will help place sport at the forefront of their minds – giving them the opportunity to network with their opposite numbers and meet their most loyal, engaged students on a day when institutional pride is at its peak, at a time when sport provision is often delegated far from the eyes of those holding the purse-strings.
Varsities also present a golden opportunity to position sport as central to campus culture. Student sport can never be separate to the campus on which it exists – just think of how many different departments come together to make varsity happen, from university-run sport departments and SUs to student media, campus services, security, grounds, catering, facilities, and retail. And what is the glue that brings together these departments and strengthens those links? Sport.
And why can’t we go even further? There’s nothing like a varsity to appeal to alumni – can they be linked, perhaps as part of fundraising efforts? Many sport departments are now harnessing the power of placement students, and there’s surely scope to involve academic schools not traditionally connected to sport in varsity too – student content creation projects, financial management, mental and physical support for the participants. Why can’t varsity provide a project on which students can work, to show senior leaders how the benefits of a well-funded sports programme can even extend to the seminar room?
The Covid-19 pandemic, which hit right before the 2020 varsities, saw a number of universities and SUs think up creative ways in which they could maintain some level of friendly competition remotely. By letting the students lead and innovate in varsities – through new participation efforts, rule changes, or targeted expansions – we can further show how sport is preparing our young people to be the changemakers of tomorrow.
Varsities are also a shop window, which can be used to advertise the sport department’s entire offer to students who normally may not look twice. Statistics lamenting the shocking decline of sporting participation, particularly among girls, at secondary school and college are everywhere, so we must shout from the rooftops about varsity as a recruitment tool to encourage students back into sport when they discover the action and community of a varsity – and consider whether that can also be quantified.
Injury time
While this is by no means widespread, several varsities have ended in recent years – such as Teesside vs Sunderland and Bournemouth vs Solent. The reasons given have varied, ranging from cuts forced by budgetary constraints to the divergence of competitors’ sporting resource making the events less competitive. Others are naturally under threat as sport departments have to make tough financial decisions and weigh up the value of one very expensive day – which can easily run into the tens of thousands – against months of regular activity.
Next year will mark the 200th anniversary of the first cricket match between Oxford and Cambridge, soon followed by the ubiquitous boat race. Varsities have been inextricably linked with UK student sport since the start, so it only makes sense that they can help us through the current challenging period.
And while there’s more work to be done exploring other underused opportunities and metrics for showing the value of student sport – especially considering international examples – for now I’d encourage our sports leaders, and other university staff advocating for less fashionable budget lines, to continue to find creative ways to show the impact of the positive experiences they make happen every day.
A well written and informative article. I can endorse the benefits of sport and wholeheartedly feel it should be available to all.