The 2022 National Sport Club Survey (NSCS) reveals that clubs nationally appear to have coped with the COVID pandemic, but face new challenges as they look ahead to a changing regulatory environment.

2022 is the fifth year for the project, which is undertaken in collaboration between the New Zealand Amateur Sport Association (NZASA) and the Sport Performance Institute New Zealand based at Auckland University of Technology (AUT SPRINZ).

Parliament's Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee has agreed to a material Association recommendation concerning the Incorporated Societies Bill, resulting in small sport clubs being spared the pain of comprehensive financial reporting.

The Select Committee has now recommended that the Bill proceed to a Second Reading. The Association will continue to closely follow the progress of the legislation and continue to lobby political parties to ensure that the debate on the Bill is in the best interests of all community sport organisations and the health and well-being of all New Zealanders.

The New Zealand Amateur Sport Association is calling out the Government for creating a law of unintended consequences with reforms to the Incorporated Societies Bill.

In a submission to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, Association Chairman Gordon Noble-Campbell said the Bill in its current form would seriously disadvantage incorporated sport entities. Incorporated sport entities were not specifically considered in the drafting of the legislation and this has put sport clubs around New Zealand at risk.

New Zealand’s Children’s Commissioner has reported that 21% of New Zealand children (236,048) live in low-income households, with over 13% (146,125) experiencing material hardship. It is government policy to halve these statistics over the next seven years.

The Association knows that low-income families experiencing material hardship are less likely to enrol their children in club-based community sport, owing to the financial barriers created by membership fees, costs of equipment to play and the costs of travel to regional sporting facilities, or out of community sporting hubs.

The Association and AUT’s Sport Performance Research Institute New Zealand are working in partnership to deliver the 2020 NSCS, which launches on Monday, 31 August. This is the third year of this important national study. Sport Clubs across more than 90 separate sporting codes, from all around New Zealand, have received an invitation to participate.

Recent media reports indicating that the rights to broadcast certain student sport competitions have been sold by New Zealand secondary school sport’s governing body, underscores the increasing alarm over decreasing teenage participation in sport and the flow-on impact for community sports clubs.

The Association encourages National Sporting Organisations (NSO)to adopt a new Code which places youth at the centre of decision-making involving their sporting participation. The Code, which NSOs are invited to voluntarily adopt, has been developed in response to increasing concern over the promotion of high-performance-development relative to life-long-participation.

Media reports  that New Zealand children of 14 or 15 years of age are now being targeted for contracts by sporting franchises, should prompt New Zealand authorities to review laws preventing the exploitation of children. 

The New Zealand Amateur Sport Association Inc. fully endorses the outcome of a recent survey of current and past players undertaken by the Otago Rugby Football Union, which revealed that local amateur clubs are where players feel most connected to the game.

Recent media reports indicating a decrease in sport participation by New Zealanders, is not news to the newly formed New Zealand Amateur Sport Association.

A new organisation has been established by well-known sporting names and community leaders to promote and support amateur sport in New Zealand.