Unlocking Sport’s Untapped Impact: Why Social Entrepreneurship Matters
02 March 2026
The intentional use of sport and physical activity has a unique ability to transform lives. It improves physical and mental wellbeing, strengthens social connections, and creates pathways to opportunity. The benefits are particularly felt in communities facing social and economic challenges.
Evidence shows that for every £1 invested in sport for development, society can gain up to £6 in social value through improved health, inclusion, and local outcomes.
Yet, despite this potential, sport often falls short of delivering impact at scale. Participation gaps persist, inequalities remain, and many programmes struggle to survive beyond short-term funding cycles.
New research by Think Beyond, supported by UnLtd and Sport England, explores how social entrepreneurship in sport; locally rooted changemakers combining business skills with social purpose, can help unlock the unrealised potential for sport and physical activity to benefit society.
What Is Social Entrepreneurship in Sport?
Social entrepreneurs use sport as a tool to improve lives while running financially sustainable business models. They are locally rooted leaders who understand their communities, combining local knowledge with practical business skills to deliver long-term impact.
They:
- Generate income through trading activities or partnerships
- Reinvest profits into their social mission
- Design programmes that improve wellbeing, inclusion, employability, and belonging through sport
Examples include:
- A football coach helping over 200 young people each year into employment
- A yoga instructor delivering trauma-informed sessions that support the mental health of 150 women annually
- A community leader using cricket to reconnect 100+ young people with education opportunities
Why Social Entrepreneurship Matters
Social entrepreneurs are well-placed to deliver social impact through sport:
- Their approaches are community-led: Trusted local leaders design sport and physical activity services around real needs, reaching people traditional systems often miss.
- Sustainable: By generating earned income, they reduce reliance on short-term grants and can continue to reinvest profits in the long-term delivery of sport and physical activity.
- Long-term outcomes: The benefits of sport and physical activity such as confidence, wellbeing, or employability takes years to realise, and social entrepreneurs are structured to stay for the long term.
- Adaptive and innovative: Proximity to communities allows programmes to evolve as needs change.
This approach allows sport to move beyond one-off projects, embedding consistent, sustainable impact in communities.
Barriers to Scaling
Despite their potential, social entrepreneurs face practical challenges:
- Short-term funding expectations that don’t align to long-term social and financial return on investment
- Impact measurement frameworks often do not the capture human-led, relational change that social entrepreneurs are well placed to deliver, and as such, those benefits can be under-valued
- Investors apply pressure to scale single organisations to maximize returns, instead of supporting many local deliverers across shared returns
- Fragmented support systems can limit the possibility of supporting numerous entrepreneurs and scaling their benefits
The result is a gap between strong local impact and broader support to help it grow as a whole.
Proof That the Model Works
Social entrepreneurship in sport already delivers measurable outcomes:
- Kick4Life (Lesotho): Combines football with hospitality businesses to fund education and health outcomes, reaching over 1,000 young people annually.
- Street Games (UK): Supports local deliverers with flexible funding and shared impact reporting, helping 50,000 young people take part in sport each year.
- Love.Fútbol (Global): Co-creates community-owned football spaces using co-financing, building self-sustaining hubs that engage hundreds of youths per location.
These examples show that local, entrepreneurial models can deliver lasting social and economic value when supported effectively.
Why This Matters Now
Social entrepreneurship is not a silver bullet, but it is a critical lever for inclusive, sustainable sport.
Locally led, entrepreneurial approaches to delivery can maximise the benefits of sport and physical activity in communities all across the UK.
A collaborative ecosystem of support, based on shared value could be a way to help enable these benefits. For example; through shared funding for entrepreneurs, shared reporting and resources. By aligning investment, expectations, and measurement with how community-based impact is created, sport can fulfil its promise as a driver of long-term, positive change in communities.
A Path Forward: From Isolated Efforts to a Collaborative Ecosystem
The research highlights the benefits of a shared value approach, where funders, investors, delivery organisations, and intermediaries align to unlock the full potential of sport and physical activity by supporting social entrepreneurship as a key delivery model. Key areas include:
- Shared Understanding: Define and promote the benefits of social entrepreneurship in sport.
- Shared Funding & Risk: Pool resources to support multiple local leaders and hybrid long-term funding.
- Shared Financial Sustainability: Blend revenue-generating activities with social impact for resilience.
- Shared Design & Reporting: Standardise impact measurement and reporting tools.
- Shared Resource Platform: Provide accessible hubs for knowledge, expert support, and collaboration.
- Shared Scalability: Encourage growth through collaboration and replication, not just expansion.
This framework shifts focus from isolated success stories to ecosystems that enable many local leaders to thrive and create sustainable social impact simultaneously.
