Government Funding Allocation to National Sports Associations

by Joshua Kwok

The government provide funding and subsidy to National Sports Associations (NSAs) registered under the Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China through the Sports Subvention Scheme.

This analysis surrounds the topic of subvention granted to NSAs, the sports culture and ecosystem in Hong Kong, and how winning medals in world-class competitions relate to the scheme.

The data is obtained from the DATA.GOV.HK and provided by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The original dataset is titled “Funding Allocation to NSAs under Sports Subvention Scheme”, and the it holds information of subvention allocated to all 62 NSAs over the 5 years, 2017-2021, ranging from 800K HKD to 21 Million.

Leading Questions

  1. What are the top National Sports Associations with the most subvention granted and what is the relationship of that to the sports commonly practiced in Hong Kong?
  2. What is the overall trend of subvention granted to all NSAs?
  3. How is the distribution of subvention granted to different NSAs?
  4. Has the subvention granted to NSAs been affected by winning medals and appearance in the Olympics?

Summary of findings

Overall Trend of Subvention Granted to NSAs

The below graph summed up the amount of subvention granted to all NSAs and calculated the percentage change of that total amount. It showed a clear and steady rise in the government’s financial support to these NSAs. Given that the rate of increase in Hong Kong’s Consumer Price Index grew steadily from 1.49% in 2017 to 2.88% in 2019. The rate of increase in the Subvention Granted was way higher than the inflation rate. Which showed that the government’s support in sports grew over the past decade. With a dip in the 2019-2020 financial year, to a 1.4% increase. In which not only did the government not reduce subvention grants even in times of COVID-19 when the inflation rate dropped to 0.25%, the increase rate of subvention granted still had a positive change. When the economy recovered from COVID, the percentage change returned to previous levels of around 20%. In short, the government’s support for sports, through the SSS had a relatively high growth rate compared to the inflation rate.

Overall Distribution of Funds

In the graph above, showed the different NSAs’ received funding represented by dots. Around 80% of NSAs lies below the 10 Million HKD mark. The highest amount of subvention granted was to the Hong Kong Table Tennis Association Limited, at 21.8 Million HKD in 2021. And the lowest amount was to the Hong Kong Water Ski Association Limited at 814K HKD in 2017.

Subvention Granted to Winning Sports.

Athletes under 6 NSAs had won medals in world-class events during the span of 2017-2021. For exmaple,the Asian Games, Olympic Games, and World Championships.

For Swimming, Siobhan Haughey had won 2 silver medals in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, 3 golds in 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games, and 1 silver medal in the 2022 World Championships. For Fencing, Cheung Ka Long had won a gold in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2023 World Champs respectively. The Men’s Rugby 7’s Team won a gold medal in the 2018 Jakata Asian Games. The Women’s Squash Team won a silver in the 2018 Jakarta. Lee Wai Sze won a bronze in both the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2022 Track Cycling Worlds. Table Tennis player Doo Hoi Kem won a silver medal in the 2018 Jakarta Games.

According to one of the government’s scope to helping sports development is to support elite sports. Summing up the medal winning sports and comparing that to the subvention granted to the according NSAs, no conclusion and direct relationship could be drawn.

One of the government’s scheme to support sports development is the 5-year Team Sports Development Program, in which the wider aim is to develop the sports that are qualified in the Olympics and considered as an Olympic Sport. The following shows the trend of subvention granted to these olympic sports.

Conclusion

In light of different government policies and projects like the Kai Tak Sports Complex, the governments’ subvention scheme had followed suit to support the growing sports ecosystem in Hong Kong. However, the amount granted to different sports assocaitons are not solely dictated by the results of the sport in an international level, but many other factors, like popularity, neediness for facilities, and some unkown government and political factors. However, a clear upward trend could be drawn from this dataset that the support for sports is increasing according to how the government had promised.