Brazil National Sports Policy

The background

Despite playing host to two of the world’s largest sports events, Brazil has no long-term strategy for sport participation. Traditionally, the country’s politicians have focused on infrastructure, stadiums, construction and transport rather than in sports participation and sport for the sake of public health. As a consequence, it is estimated that two thirds of the Brazilian population over 16 years of age are inactive and almost half of the population are overweight. Only one in every four primary school has sports facilities.

Brazil’s provision for grassroots sports activities is currently delivered by two organisations linked to the labour market: SESC and SESI, which operate in all of Brazil’s states. Each organisation receives 1.5 per cent of the companies’ payroll and, in return, offers sports and cultural activities for millions of employees. Both organisations are responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with the country’s National Governing Organisations (NGOs).

The scenario

The Brazilian Ministry of Sport has chosen to formulate a national sports and recreation policy. They have set out the vision that by 2026 – ten years after the Rio Olympic Games – there will have been a transformation in sport in Brazil so that sport becomes a habit for life for more people and a regular choice for the majority. The policy aims to:

• See more people taking on and keeping a sporting habit for life;
• Create more opportunities for young people;
• Nurture and develop talent;
• Provide the right facilities in the right places;
• Ensure real opportunities for communities.

The first task for the Ministry is to gather knowledge on the physical and recreational activities of the Brazilian population and understand how it can best grow participation across a range of sport and recreational activities. SESC has been charged with the responsibility of delivering a comprehensive research plan and has released the project to tender.

Your task

You work for a market research agency that will pitch for the contract. You must develop a research proposal that will provide high quality insight and robust data to meet the following requirements:

• Information on the current levels and types of participation in sports and recreation in Brazil
• Evidence of what works and how sport can best make a contribution to improving the health of the Brazilian people
• Insight into how sport can reach inactive people who do little or no sport, and encourage them to take up sport regularly and improve their health.

Your proposal should include the following:

• An overview of the research context
• An overview of the project lifecycle
• Clearly defined research objectives
• The research design(s) and methodologies you will use
• The research questions you will ask
• How the data will be collected
• How the collected data will be analysed
• How you will ensure the accuracy, reliability and validity of the data
• How you will translate the data into actionable insight
• Any other implications or issues

You may use any resources available to you, including academic literature, industry reports and examples of sports participation research from other countries. To begin, you may wish to refer to the Global Sports Media Consumption Report (2014), which is available for download here in Canvas. This week’s lecture slides include a number of academic references.

Whilst it is necessary for you to understand the context of your research, the aim of this task is not about defining the structures of sports governance in Brazil. You are testing your ability to design and plan a comprehensive sports marketing research project.

For this assignment, you will be presenting against each other for the right to carry out the research. Whoever has the best presentation will theoretically win the rights to carry out the research, and get a 100% for the assignment.  You should prepare presentations of no longer than 15 minutes’ duration. Conciseness, accuracy and innovation will be rewarded!

You will create a PowerPoint presentation and then present this presentation, via a recording, using Zoom. You will then submit this assignment.