SportFin is an online platform created to bridge the gap between sport funders and organisations. The platform uses real-time data, open government statistics and powerful social impact analytics, to help show and demonstrate the social value of investing in sport.

SportFin can help sport funders better understand the impact that their investments are having on the people, communities and areas they are investing in, and go beyond the traditional metrics of participation numbers to get a comprehensive understanding of the reach and wider socio-economic effects of sport.

SportFin leverages a combination of open government data, real-time sport data and a social impact analytics algorithm to create powerful insights to help funders assess and determine the areas that need more funding or might benefit from extra attention. Funders can also track and monitor the results of their investments over time.

Sport organisations looking to get their initiatives funded can provide funders with an in-depth understanding of the direct and indirect benefits of investing in their sport programmes and projects by providing a real-time pipeline of data - helping funders evidence the social value their funding is generating in real-time.

The SportFin’s Impact Analytics Framework is driven by an advanced algorithm that leverages the SIMPLE impact measurement framework[1] and aggregate complexity theory[2] to quantify and measure the impact of your social initiatives.

The model takes a variety of input data from 25 organisational, activity and individual variables and reports up to 61 impact correlations per participant/volunteer. This correlations data is generated by the algorithm following analysis and comparison of a corpus of academic research on the social impact of sport (which is updated on an ongoing basis with new research).

To ensure accuracy, SportFin has integrated an interdependence factor within the model. This clever factor accounts for the non-linearity of the impact system, thus giving weight to outcome relationships that could potentially lead to emergent impact phenomenon.

Primary research on outcome variables shall be separately and periodically collected through the platform from participants and volunteers for validation of outcome relationships, identification of emergent outcome relationships, identification of positive feedback loop triggers and for training the SportFin impact analytics model – all working to increase the accuracy and reliability of our impact quantifications.

Estimating the value of participating and volunteering in sports is important for organisations that fund sport services to determine the social benefit their funding helps create for the public. The Social Return on Investment (SROI) framework offers a way to measure the social value of sport services by taking into account the potential savings to the NHS and gains to the public from the enhancement of human and social capital that results from sport activities.

In the case of promoting sporting activities, SROI utilizes the annual healthcare cost per individual for a particular health condition, multiplied by the number of individuals who are likely to prevent the onset of that condition due to their participation in sporting activities. By doing so, SROI can determine the potential health outcomes of promoting sporting activities, and also estimate the economic value of these outcomes. This information can then be used to make informed decisions about funding and resource allocation for sports programs and initiatives.

By assessing the value of improved productivity and increased wages that may result from educational and employability impacts, this framework provides a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the impact that sport can have on individuals and communities. By considering both the direct and indirect benefits of sport-related programs, the SROI for sport framework can help organizations make more informed decisions about where to allocate their resources to achieve maximum impact.

The SROI framework assesses the benefits of social capital improvement and crime reduction outcomes, to estimate the value of sports participation in society. To quantify these benefits, a monetary value is assigned, based on the hypothetical income that would be required to make up for not reaping the benefits of social capital enhancement (and subjective well-being) that come with engaging in sports and physical activities, as well as the average cost per crime incident.

If you would like to find out more about SportFin’s impact analytics model and how it can help your sport initiatives, please reach out to us at [email protected].