THE ECONOMICS OF SPORT

Will Watt, founder and director at State of Life, is a key figure in linking sport and physical activity with measurable wellbeing and economic value. Through his work with State of Life, he has advised organisations, such as Sport England, on using data – including the WELLBY measure – to help evidence the significant societal benefits of being active. He tells SportsNation why sport must change the way it proves its worth, if it wants to achieve its ambition of becoming a key player in the government’s plans to establish a health care system based on prevention

Will Watt has built his career on making sense of things other people insist are too complicated. As co-founder of State of Life, and one of the leading voices in wellbeing economics, he has helped shift the way the UK understands the value of sport and physical activity. Not just in terms of health outcomes, but in how being active shapes people’s happiness, trust, confidence, community connection and life satisfaction. It’s a big subject, but when you speak to Watt, he boils it down quickly – then tells you why the sector needs to start being far more honest with itself.

“If you’re a sports or physical activity organisation and claim to make people’s lives better,” he says. “You need to have the decency to ask them whether you actually are.”

It’s a line typical of Watt’s style: direct, plain- spoken, but grounded in years of methodological rigour. And in a sector that has long wrestled with how to quantify impact, his message is simple: the tools exist, the evidence exists – and the excuses no longer stack up.

State of Life is perhaps best known for its work with Sport England but it has also helped the likes of Greater Manchester’s GM Active network, Parkrun, Girlguiding and dozens of other bodies wanting to understand, properly, how their programmes help make people’s lives better. The company’s work on the social value of sport and physical activity, commissioned by Sport England and published in 2024, generated headlines by estimating that sport provides more than £100 billion worth of social value each year. That includes physical and mental health benefits, improved wellbeing, increased social trust and stronger communities.

But for Watt, the number itself is not the story. The story is how the sector gets to that number – and, crucially, how it can use consistent evidence to drive system change.

From law to Lloyd’s to wellbeing economics

Watt’s route into wellbeing economics wasn’t obvious. His early career spanned law, insurance and publishing. This included a stint at Viz magazine that he still recalls fondly. “I spent five years at Viz and loved it,” he says. “it’s been downhill ever since”.

Watt adds that there was a common thread to each role, however. “If I’m good at something, it is taking complex problems or issues and boiling them down to the crux of it”, he says, crediting his legal education.

“My first degree was in law, which is a discipline in which you’ve got to take these really complicated problems and strip them down to their essence, often a single key point of legal contention.”

His first real “job” in sport and physical activity was with the Join In Trust, the Olympic Legacy project set up to recruit and retain volunteers in grassroot sport. It was there that he first found himself asking questions few others in the sector were asking.

He had been tasked with calculating the economic value of volunteering. When his analysis suggested that sport volunteering alone was worth £55 billion a year to the UK economy, he was surprised by the large figure – and braced for backlash. Instead, something remarkable happened. After his report was out and Watt was expecting the worst, an unexpected email arrived. Lord Gus O’Donnell, former Cabinet Secretary, wrote to him with just one line: “Have you seen this?”. It was a reference to a speech, by the then chief economist at the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, on the economics of volunteering. Haldane had spoken just two weeks before Watt’s report was published.

“I had no idea he had given that speech and my initial thought was of horror,” Watt recalls the moment. “I thought the Bank of England would completely contradict our findings.

“But as I put my headphones on, sunk in my chair and began to read the report, I slowly realised that he (Haldane) had used more or less the same methodology as we did,” Watt says. “Astonishingly, the number he gave as the value of volunteering in total was £200 billion.

“Now, we had already estimated that sports volunteering was responsible for around 20% to 25% of the total value. So the figures worked.”

Watt says it was a turning point. “I sat there thinking: there’s a whole field here – a whole set of data, that no one in sport is using properly,” he says.

It led to developing a model for comparing the wellbeing and health outcomes of participants and volunteers with statistically matched groups in national datasets. The key insight was simple but transformative: “You don’t have to guess what might have happened without an intervention – you can start to compare a comparison / control group,” Watt says, adding that this is where sport keeps falling short to this date.

“We’ve been making huge claims based on assumptions. Meanwhile, the NHS uses comparison groups as standard. If you say you’re improving people’s health, then we need to ask them – and compare them to those who are not active and not getting our ‘treatment’.”

He also believes that the sector has, at times, been held back by what he calls “logos and egos”.

“There are brilliant people out there, but there are also organisations who feel they need to own the evidence, control the narrative, and protecttheir position,” he says. “That’s why progress has been slow. Because consistent evidence means comparability – and comparability means accountability.” It’s not enough to be right, people have to want you to be right - and I wish I was better at that bit - it’s where having the support of Gus O’Donnell is hugely helpful.

There are brilliant people out there, but there are also organisations who feel they need to own the evidence, control the narrative, and protect their position

Sharing is caring

While Watt says that too many organisations aren’t basing their claims on robust data, he is quick to praise the organisations that do. These include Greater Manchester’s GM Active, Life Leisure in Stockport, Sport for Confidence in Essex and other forward-thinking operators who genuinely want to know whether their programmes work and for who.

The example he returns to repeatedly is Stockport, where the council’s facilities are operated by Life Leisure. Led by Michelle Childs, Head of Health Development and John Oxley, CEO, Life Leisure has invested in a rigorous, transparent approach: it uses treatment and control groups, consistent measurement and openly shared data. For Watt, it encapsulates what the whole sector should be doing.

“I would love there to be some consistent evidence and, frankly, for the sector to do nationally what Michelle and John have done in Stockport and then across eight boroughs of Manchester with GM Active,” he says. “Asking the same questions of people and comparing them with similar people in other areas.”

Watt also refers to the HM Treasury Green Book – the gold standard for public policy evidence. Watt wants more people who work in leadership positions within sport to actually read it. “It’s all in there – what wellbeing is, how to measure it and how to incorporate it into economic decision-making. We need far more people in sport to understand that language.”

The stakes, Watt argues, could not be higher. Government health spending is nearing £200 billion a year. Inequalities are widening. Demand for services is outstripping capacity. If sport wants to be taken seriously as part of the preventative health strategy, it must meet the NHS halfway on evidence.

“Physical activity doesn’t just deserve more funding from DCMS,” he says. “It deserves recognition from the Department of Health and the NHS – but only if we measure consistently. Otherwise, how can we prove what works and in particular who benefits most to get the greatest return on public funding?”

He believes the sector has covered too little ground in shifting resources where they matter most. Strategies are improving, he says, helped by strong communication from Sport England, but “beneath the strategies”, he says, “delivery hasn’t changed yet”.

“The evidence is there. The need is there. Now, the sector must demonstrate, convincingly, who it is reaching, how long people stay engaged and what actually changes in their lives as a result. I want us, as a sector, to ask people things like: How active were you before? How has your wellbeing changed? How long have you been part of this activity? That alone would transform the evidence base.”

Wellbeing economics made simple

For someone so closely associated with complex data, Watt is keen to simplify.

“Wellbeing economics is really just the economics of everyday life,” he says. “When you ask a friend how they are and they say ‘five out of ten’ or ‘eight out of ten’, you’re already doing wellbeing economics. GDP is miles away from our daily lives. But wellbeing? Everyone understands that and we do it every day of our lives - it’s the economics of everyday life.”

He talks about “weekly purposeful endeavour” – the idea that much of human wellbeing is shaped by doing meaningful things with others on a regular rhythm. It might be playing sport, watching a team, volunteering, going to a religious service or community group.

“It’s not the activity itself,” he says. “It’s the combination of purpose, people and regularity. That’s where the value lies.”

This idea underpins a 2019 State of Life paper, Faith, Hoops and Charity, which explores how simple weekly routines drive personal and community wellbeing. The message, he says, is the same today: make it part of everyday life. Make it normal. Make it accessible.

It’s the combination of purpose, people & regularity. That’s where the value lies

Fat pills or fit pills? The real comparison

One area where Watt believes wellbeing metrics will soon be central is in the national conversation about GLP-1 drugs, or “fat jabs”, such as Ozempic. His team have analysed clinical guidance and compared it to data from GM Active. Their conclusion is unambiguous: physical activity seems to be far more cost-effective.

“These drugs cost the NHS around £3,000 a year per person,” he says. “Even the trials show that if people stop taking them, they return to where they started. Meanwhile, physical activity programmes deliver enormous long-term wellbeing gains at a fraction of the cost.”

He is not hostile to the drugs themselves; in fact, he thinks they can be complementary. But he does see a danger: “If you don’t measure wellbeing alongside physical health, you miss half the picture,” he explains.

Integrity first

Another theme that pops up in conversation with Watt is that of integrity. His challenge is deliberately blunt: stop making untested claims about social value. Stop relying on assumptions. Instead, start using methods that meet the standards of the NHS, Treasury and wider public sector.

“There are people in the sector doing brilliant work and they welcome proper evidence,” he says. “But there are others who have avoided it for too long.”

“If you claim to make people’s lives better, ask them. That’s the standard. That’s accountability. And that’s how we earn our place at the table.”

He acknowledges that shifting the culture will take time. But with those controlling the purse strings, such as Sport England, increasingly demanding consistent evidence, he believes the tide is turning.

“The smart people in infrastructure, health and policy know we have to get this right,” he adds. “If we don’t, inequality gets worse and nothing changes.”

Putting evidence in the hands of the people

Watt’s ambition is, ultimately, democratic. He wants transparent evidence that belongs to the public, not to individual organisations – and for comparable data to be collected in the same way across the country. And he wants a culture in which “honesty beats spin”.

“The power doesn’t sit with the big organisations. It sits with the people who answer the questions,” he says.

According to Watt, the value of sport, ultimately, isn’t about heroic narratives or policy documents. It’s about whether someone’s life feels better – more connected, healthier and happier – because of something a programme did. And if you’re not asking them, you could be making claims you can’t back.