Sports Policy factors Leading to Inernational Sporting Success

Sport development as a public policy priority is increasingly marked by growing institutionalization and government involvement and the development of a state apparatus for the delivery and management of sport (e.g., Bergsgard, Houlihan, Mangset, Nodland, & Rommetvedt, 2007; De Bosscher, Bingham, Shibli, van Bottenburg, & De Knop, 2008; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Houlihan & Green, 2008). More often than not elite sporting success has been seen by governments as a resource valuable for its malleability and its capacity to help achieve a wide range of non-sporting objectives (Green & Houlihan, 2005). There is a growing belief among researchers and policy makers that nations who increasingly plan for success will increase their chances of success (De Bosscher, Bingham et al., 2008). This has led to increasing competition in international sports with extensive investment by sports governments through funding and national lottery funding. As the supply of medals (success) remains essentially fixed (the IOC has indicated that it would like the number of events to be capped at around 300), and the demand for success is increasing (more nations taking part and more nations winning medals), the "market" adjusts by raising the "price of success" (Shibli, 2003). Nations will be required to invest even more just to maintain their success and standing still means, in effect, going backwards because international success increasingly depends on the actions of rival nations (De Bosscher, Bingham et al., 2008).
While Hogan and Norton (2000) found that during the nineties there was a significant linear relationship between money spent and total medals won in Australia, there is evidence that in the period 1980-1996, this has become less valid. De Bosscher et al. (2008) found that none of the nations in a sample of six (Belgium, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and United Kingdom) improved its market share of medal points between 2000 and 2004 even though their expenditures on elite sport (from government funding and lotteries) had increased during the same period. There are diminishing returns on investment and it is necessary to continue investing in elite sport simply to maintain existing performance levels (De Bosscher, et al., 2008). The fundamental principle of what has been described as 'a global sporting arms race' is that international sporting success can be produced by investing strategically in elite sport (Oakley & Green, 2001; De Bosscher et al., 2008). A key feature of this 'arms race' is that the rules are determined by what rival nations are doing now, rather than by what an individual nation did in the past (De Bosscher et al., 2008).
We present a conceptual framework, the Sports Policy factors Leading to International Sporting Success, also known as the SPLISS model (De Bosscher, De Knop, van Bottenburg, Shibli, 2006). This model is the result of joint efforts of a consortium group of international researchers who wanted to develop a model that could be used by policy makers and high performance managers to compare and benchmark nations in elite sport; to measure the performances of their organizations; and to evaluate the effectiveness of national elite sport policies (e.g. De Bosscher, Shilbury, Theeboom & Van Hoecke, 2011). While the model addresses the evaluation at the national level of elite sport policy, it is also designed to be implemented at other levels, for example by national sport organisations (sports federations) (Truyens et al., n.d. (athletics); Brouwers et al., n.d. (tennis); Sotiriadou et al., n.d. (Canoe)), commercial teams (Bogerd, 2010) and at the city level (Van Rossum, n.d.; De meyer, n.d.)).