Investing in sport has been a priority for UK universities over the last decade to improve the student experience, with many campuses now routinely boasting multi-million pound facilities.
In the two years leading up to the pandemic, Britain’s higher education sector had spent over £350m developing sports facilities and the University of Portsmouth is the latest example, set to open its new £57m Ravelin sports center in 2022, which will cost over will feature a swimming pool, climbing wall, ski simulator, gymnasium and fitness suite with 175 stations.
Student participation in sports has been shown to have an impact on a variety of metrics including satisfaction, retention, final scores, mental health and wellbeing, and clearly justifies the investment. In 2020, the national governing body for university sport in the UK, British Universities & Colleges Sport, published a case study with Sheffield Hallam University showing a lower dropout rate and higher graduation classifications among sport participants than at the university as a whole.
But what about the impact on recruitment? The global appeal of the sport and an industry predicted to be worth US$599.9 billion by 2025 has not gone unnoticed by the international student recruitment sector.
Private consulting agencies such as Crimson Education and College Scholarships USA (now operated by Keystone Academic) have long supported athletes studying in the United States. However, one company has successfully focused on supporting overseas athletes in the UK and is seeing demand increasing. The Student Sport Company began as a service to help US athletes find postgraduate options in the UK and has recently expanded their recruitment services to any student seeking advice on how to pursue their sporting passion at university in the UK.
“We started working with UK universities because we saw the restrictions in the US that collegiate athletes cannot play in collegiate sports,” said Harry Newton, CEO of The Student Sport Company.
“Our students showed great interest in pursuing their sport and postgraduate education in the UK and since then we have developed our relationship with the university coaches, the international offices and our understanding of the UK application process,” he adds.
“The opportunities are out there for student athletes in the UK and we’re just digging a little deeper to find them.”
“We now have applications from over 22 different nationalities at all academic levels and we are dealing with a wider range of sports-loving students. We balance traditional college consulting with our expert knowledge of college sports and local club systems to meet expectations and find the right facility to meet our client’s needs. Opportunities are out there for student athletes in the UK and we’re just digging a little deeper to find them.”
Photo: The Student Sports Society
A strong college sports brand can be fundamental to the college’s market position, recruitment and an important factor in the choice of a student. There are elements of this in the UK where the BUCS Super Rugby final is played at Twickenham and the University Boat Race between crews from Oxford and Cambridge is televised nationally.
There are also many sponsorship deals between professional football, rugby and cricket clubs and their local universities that aim to create an emotional bond with fans locally or internationally, depending on the brand’s reach.
2018, De Montfort University has become the Official University Partner of Leicester City Football Club citing “Leicester City’s global appeal in the Premier League and combined influence locally and internationally will continue to be of significant benefit to all parties.” Similarly, the University of Portsmouth sponsored Portsmouth Football Club on a three-year deal from the 2018/2018 season. 19 and Swansea University sponsored Swansea City during the 2020-21 season.
That impact can be exponential when you can integrate some of the world’s biggest sports brands directly into your course portfolio. In order to meet the need for practical graduates in the fields of sports science, business and media, a unique group of vocational universities has emerged in recent years.
University Campus for Football Economics was founded in 2011 and offers higher education degrees in the football and sports industry. It now recruits over 2,000 students worldwide with a footprint that includes teaching centers at Wembley Stadium in London, Etihad Campus in Manchester, Red Bull Arena in New York, Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, BMO Field in Toronto and the MCG in Melbourne.
2015 French institution AMOS Sports Business School established a London campus in Greenwich after the 2012 Olympics to capitalize on the UK’s sporting heritage. Tuition for students is provided by former top athletes and stakeholders from major clubs and leagues such as West Ham United (Ken Sharp, Managing Director), Rugby League (Jon Dutton, Managing Director Rugby League World Cup 2021), Scottish Professional Football League (Neil Doncaster, CEO), NFL (Paul Deakin, team liaison and logistics manager) and infrastructure managers such as those of the StadiArena (Ian Stokes, CEO).
Another recent example is UniversityAcademy92, the university college founded by the famous Manchester United football team known as the ‘Class of ’92’. UA92 has entered the international recruitment market with a strategic pathway partnership Navitaswhile his Degree programs are awarded by the University of Lancaster.
“The fact that our founding partners are sporting icons is a big part of our brand appeal.”
Gary Pritchard, UA92’s Chief Academic Officer, explains how the academy’s ties to sport inform both the curriculum and the global brand.
“Although we have a course portfolio across many disciplines at UA92, the fact that our founding partners are sporting icons is a big part of our brand appeal and vision as an academic institution,” he says.
“Gary Neville was with us at the UCAS student recruitment fair in Manchester recently and we had a tremendous response from potential students who not only admire his career Athlete, but also entrepreneur, media presenter and philanthropist.”
UA92 students – alongside their academic students – too “Embark on a personal development journey to prepare them to reach their full potential in the world of work and life,” he continues.
“Gary’s career at Manchester United has inspired him to bring crucial life skills such as resilience, leadership and communication skills into the UA92 curriculum. By finding that balance between academic and human skills, we also respond to the skill gaps that employers are demanding of graduates,” says Pritchard.
“We believe this type of education will have global appeal and we look forward to working with Navitas to welcome international students to our campus in the near future.”
Other sports legends who have lent their profile to student recruitment in recent years are cricket legend Brian Lara, who opened the Swinburne University of Technology learning facility in Sydney in 2020 and Irish cricketer Kevin O’Brien, brought on by Enterprise Ireland to help tap India’s huge student market through marketing and press initiatives 2012.
Loughborough University, ranked the world’s top university for sport-related subjects in the 2021 QS Higher Education League Table, was associated with more than 100 athletes who competed in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. What may surprise you, however, is that Leeds Beckett University has been linked to 13 athletes in the same Olympics, such is the strength and breadth of the sporting offering in the UK.
As early as 2000, former South African President Nelson Mandela declared that “sport has the power to change the world” and in 2022 we will see sport used as a platform to stimulate social change as well as physical achievement. Is it any wonder that this generation of prospective students now rates sport just as highly as their academic goals?
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