Sports governing body: Coaching membership proposition design

01 April 2025 — 1 min read

Sports

Business Strategy

A premier national sports governing body in the US approached us with a bold ambition: to make America top-playing nation for a sport. Their mission extended beyond growth—they aimed to bring greater diversity to the sport and set a new standard for excellence as a national governing body. However, a recent growth in the player population since COVID-19 required an increase in the number of coaches, necessary to preserve player experience and drive player retention. Therefore, to attract and retain more coaches, it was necessary to re-imagine and redesign the membership proposition for coaches in the sport.

Outcome 1: Identified four possible scenarios to progress, each designed to deliver an improved end-user experience to acquire and retain coaches of the sport across all segments in the United States. One of these is set to launch this year
Outcome 2: Built a robust cost and revenue model that forecasted membership growth, coaching population growth, and pace of implementation for each of the identified move forward scenarios
Outcome 3: Provided guidance on industry best-practices and considerations for designing and implementing a new coaching proposition

The challenge

Growth in coach participation in the sport has been stagnant since the covid-19 pandemic. A lack of differentiators between professional and non-professional coaches in the sport has resulted in low remuneration and insufficient employment opportunities for both populations. As a result, coaches of the sport have entered adjacent coaching professions or exited coaching altogether to pursue higher-paying career opportunities.

Our client aimed to position the US as the top-playing nation for the sport, increase diversity and set the standard as its national governing body. With the sport’s recent growth, the organisation had an opportunity to shape its future. However, sustaining this momentum required expanding the coaching pool to maintain player experience and retention. To attract and retain more coaches, reimagining and redesigning the coaching membership proposition became essential.

The approach

The team conducted over 50 stakeholder interviews to gather inputs from across the organisation, external industry experts and stakeholders from other sport governing bodies. The insights from these interviews were supplemented by desktop research to identify industry best practices and defining the target state proposition. The insights formed the basis of four move forward scenarios the team outlined to solve for the target state coaching proposition. Each scenario was detailed with a Business Case, including an operational structure, governance model, cost, revenue and pace of implementation estimates, and qualitative analysis on the associated opportunities, risks and dependencies.

Impact

With a strong foundation in place, our client is now equipped to take action and drive real change. Once fully implemented, this proposition will be instrumental in transforming and sustaining the future health of the sport in the U.S.

Business Strategy