English Gàidhlig
#SportForLife25 is our annual review. It covers the sixth year of our corporate strategy, Sport for Life.
Table of contents
Minister’s foreword
I am delighted to be introducing this report in my new role as Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy and Sport.
This report highlights the fantastic work by sportscotland and the wider sporting sector to support communities and people across Scotland to be active, despite the continuing economic challenges.
This year, sportscotland celebrated the 20th anniversary of Active Schools, a long-term investment programme in health and well-being, which provides positive experiences of sport and physical activity from a young age. Across this 20-year period, there were a staggering 62.5 million visits by pupils, in over 3 million Active Schools sessions. I was particularly pleased at the achievement of the Programme for Government commitment for Active Schools to be free for all children and young people across the country by the end of this Parliament.
sportscotland’s continued focus on community sport is clear in this report and remains essential – supporting a vital part of the sporting system. I had the privilege of attending sportscotland’s Coaching, Officiating and Volunteering awards in November. These awards celebrate the incredible people who are making a difference across all sports in Scotland. I’d again like to thank all the professionals and volunteers who are committed to getting people active.
It has also been a fantastic year for our athletes competing on the world stage, including the incredible achievements by Scottish athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. What’s more, we welcomed the news that the Commonwealth Games will be returning to Scotland in 2026. This will provide opportunities for our athletes to experience a memorable major sporting event at home and will inspire people across Scotland to be active.
The challenges facing the sporting sector have taught us that collaboration is essential if we are to make further progress towards a more active Scotland. I am looking forward to working with sportscotland and the wider sector in the coming year to continue to bring positive change to people’s lives through sport and physical activity.
Maree Todd, Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy and Sport
Overview
sportscotland is the national agency for sport. Our vision is an active Scotland where everyone benefits from sport.
We invest Scottish Government and National Lottery resources to help the people of Scotland get the most from the sporting system.
A sporting system for everyone
Sport For Life 2025 is our annual review. It covers the sixth year of our corporate strategy, Sport for Life.
In April 2025, we refreshed our Corporate Strategy Sport for Life in line with the Physical activity for health: framework which will be the basis of our Annual Report in future years.
In April 2024 we agreed our business plan for 2024 and beyond. This describes how we will deliver our commitment to Sport For Life, while supporting the sporting system to respond to the current economic challenges and drive inclusion and recovery.
This annual review aims to demonstrate our progress between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 through:
- Key performance indicators that show participation trends across each environment in the sporting system, focusing on scale and diversity of participants
- Infographics demonstrating our support to the sport sector, aligned to the Active Scotland Outcomes
- Personal stories highlighting the impact of our collaborative work with partners across the system
#SportForLife25
Chief Executive’s review
Between April 2024 and March 2025, Scotland’s sporting landscape has shown remarkable strength and flexibility in challenging economic times by continuing to deliver positive experiences for individuals and communities across the country.
Community and collaboration are more important than ever, and I’d like to recognise and acknowledge the unwavering support and commitment of our local and national partners who continue to drive progress, manage change and build resilience across the sector.
Sport at all levels has the power to change lives, and our coaches, volunteers and community clubs make it happen. Their passion and commitment create daily opportunities for people to participate, progress and achieve in sport - uplifting individuals, strengthening groups, and inspiring real growth. The impact goes beyond sport in shaping lives and communities every day.
At Paris 2024, 33 Scottish athletes delivered on the world stage at the Olympic and Paralympic games. We witnessed memorable moments, new records, personal bests, and impressive debuts, culminating in a total of 13 medals for Scots on Team GB and 20 medals for Scots on ParalympicsGB.
The road to Paris was a collective effort, showcasing not only the extraordinary talent of our athletes but also the dedication of coaches, support staff, parents, guardians, and volunteers – all of whom played a part over the journey to Paris.
As we prepare for the return of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow 2026, we recognise the opportunity to build on our strong history of success, to inspire future generations and importantly to use the Games as an opportunity to promote and develop sport at all levels in Scotland.
A big thank you to Mel Young and to the other four Board members who have recently come to the end of their terms on the sportscotland Board. With the appointment of Maureen Campbell as chair and the addition of five new sportscotland board members, I am confident that Scottish sport is in good hands.
Forbes Dunlop, Chief Executive, sportscotland
Playing our part
Our business plan shows how we planned to deliver Sport for Life in this year. We delivered well in 2024/25, reaching 1.1 million people. This headline position is static on 2023/24, however adjusting for known data revisions, our overall reach has increased by 1.6%. Our key performance indicators show mixed results. Our equality indicators are maintaining consistent with prior year. We achieved well on the world stage. We improved our support to the sector. We strengthened how we work.
Programmes
Our key programmes are maintaining or improving. In August 2024, we celebrated 20 years of Active Schools – our key schools and education programme. We reached 280,000 participants this year, a 3.5% increase on last year. This programme has delivered continued growth since Covid-19. We also:
- have 48% of Scottish schools registered with School Sport Awards.
- delivered six Young Ambassador Conferences, reaching over 600 young leaders in sport.
Our key clubs and communities programme is our investment in Scottish Governing Bodies (SBGs). There were 800,129 playing club members in 2024/25. While this is a headline 1.3% decrease since last year, this is largely driven by new system and associated data cleanse of reporting club figures for football, the sector’s second largest sport. Adjusting for this change across both years, the SGB club membership figures are maintaining compared with last year. We also:
- made progress in equalities, diversity and inclusion, with 22 SGBs completing the new Moving to Inclusion tool.
- provided more support to SGBs, including a new case management support service, and a new governance audit contract.
- provided safety and wellbeing support, with learning and development on child wellbeing and protection reaching 600 attendees, and a UK wide Vision for Welfare and Safeguarding in Sport in the UK project.
We achieved well on the world stage. At Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games we had a good representation of athletes competing, with 33 Scottish athletes on Team GB securing 13 medals and 21 Scottish athletes on ParalympicsGB securing 20 medals.
There was a further boost to Scottish performance sport with the Commonwealth Games confirmed to be returning to Glasgow in 2026.
Partners
We brought senior leaders from our key partners together through the strategic forum. This informed our long-term planning proposals to Scottish Government and responded to the latest data on the financial position of publicly funded sport. We made strong proposals to support the Scottish Government fulfilling their commitment to double the sport and active living budget by the end of this parliamentary term. Scottish Government financial challenges meant this commitment was not fulfilled in 2024/25. We also:
- supported 12 local authorities on physical activity and sport strategies.
- supported targeted EDI work in seven local authorities: Glasgow, Fife, Dundee, Clackmannanshire, West Lothian, North Ayrshire and Orkney.
People
We provided significant learning and development support to the sector:
- We continue to support sports to develop and embed the Scottish Coaching Certificate.
- We have 44,232 Scottish learners on our Brightspace learning and development platform.
- We completed our 2024/25 coach education subsidy. Over £400k was awarded across 27 sports. The top five EDI focus areas this year are females, young people, rural accessibility, SIMD, and disability.
- We launched The Coaching Scotland Development Tool. Local and national partners are engaging in themes and collaboration to share practice and agree actions aligned to Coaching Scotland.
- We launched our second SGB CEO executive coaching programme cohort.
- We piloted the national progression awards in sports coaching. We procured five suppliers for our Sport Educator Framework to support learning and development for local and national partners.
Places
We commissioned a review of the sports estate in Scotland. Local authorities, leisure trusts, colleges and universities have shared their data. This includes the age, condition and investment needed. We are working to address gaps in utilisation data. We made over 200 site visits to club owned facilities. We are working with local authorities and SGBs to monitor the risk of facilities fully or partly closing. In 2024/25 we committed to invest:
- £1.7m into nineteen Sports Facility Fund projects.
- nearly £1m into six Cycling Facilities Fund projects.
- £850k into one Transforming Scottish Indoor Tennis project.
- We also found the financial climate is still affecting planning and implementation of capital projects.
Making it happen
We strengthened how we work. We revised our corporate strategy which will relaunch in 2025/26. We progressed an in-depth review of our business plan and budget.
We made improvements to how we work:
- Continued to emphasise the importance of staff wellbeing.
- Introduced a new 35 hour working week.
- Repeated our Good Day at Work survey.
- Commissioned a strategic workforce review to inform our future workforce needs.
- Successfully implemented measures to help manage our internal costs.
- Progressed the sale of our Caledonia House and Cumbrae centres, helping manage our costs and our environmental sustainability goals.
We continue to enable our work through software development and cyber secure infrastructure:
- Increasing our learning and development on cyber security, records management, and business continuity
- Took part in a cyber resilience pilot with HEFESTIS to assess our compliance against the upcoming Scottish Public Sector Cyber Resilience Framework (SPSCRF) v2.0.
We supported data driven decisions by publishing interactive Power BI reports on our key programmes, with positive partner feedback. We significantly added to the evidence base, publishing:
- Equality and Sport Research 2024
- Economic Importance of Sport 2024
- Review of Culture and Leisure Services in Scotland 2024
- Facilities Charges Review 2024.
We brought the sporting community together to celebrate the successes of those involved in sport from grassroots to high performance through the Coaching and Volunteering (COV) Awards and Scottish Sport Awards.
We celebrated the 30th birthday of The National Lottery. Since the first draw, National Lottery players have supported more than 690,000 projects, raising over £50 billion for Good Causes across the country.
