The FA – forecasting
Forecasting football participation
Understanding needs
Football participation levels, were seeing unexplained declines.
Bonamy Finch were asked to provide a more robust estimate of future football participation as well as quantify the factors driving changes in participation levels across key demographic groups to help inform investment strategy.
Connecting data
A variety of data streams including demographics by region, weather data, facilities provision, social media KPIs, TV viewing figures, investment in facilities & participation schemes. All modelled against Sport England’s Active People Survey which measures the number of people participating in different sports.
Driving change
The model was really strong – it explained 96% of variation in participation levels.
The sporting association is making good ongoing use of the model to forecast scenarios ultimately impacting future participation levels to help inform investment strategy.
Bonamy Finch built a very accurate model from a number of diverse and initially difficult data sources. Their ability to take this complex data set and present this to a wide group of stakeholders in easily understandable yet impactful way has meant that the findings and actions from the project have influenced the way we are approaching our planning for the next funding cycle.
Head of Research & Insight
The Football Association