This article investigates the role of sociodemographic characteristics, educational and economic variables on sports participation in a comparative way in two European countries: Spain and England. Adopting a broad concept of sport, as in the common European approach, we analyse the determinants of sports participation in 40 different professional and nonprofessional sports and recreational activities in both countries. The research involves a comparative analysis between the data of England and Spain based on two logistic regressions. The regression equation of every country tests the effect of 17 binary explanatory variables on a dependent binary variable for participation. Higher education level, professional occupation, younger age and being male are all factors associated with more sports participation. Although there is no difference in the direction of the factor effects on participation between England and Spain, there is considerable variation in their relative strength, which has sport policy implications in the two nations.

The aim of the article is to provide a regional approach to analyse sports participation in two different contexts: organised/formal versus non-organised/informal participation, using Sport England’s Active People Survey national data set. We have estimated two models: first, a general model to explain differences in regional informal and formal participation rates; second, an econometric model dealing with formal participation at a regular frequency. The results emphasise the different roles played by some correlates depending on the context of sports participation under study. Only economic and cultural variables seem to have a general influence throughout all the sports participation contexts. The results reinforce the role played by sport supply and sport funding in some sports participation levels, offering interesting implications for sport policy. The urban environment, for example, appears to be positively related to the transition from informal to formal sport participation. The distinct analyses of the sports participation contexts provide the opportunity to evaluate ways of boosting participation as well as to suggest some interesting policy implications towards this aim. For example, sporting infrastructure is only influential for the transition from non-participation to formal participation, implying that in general the key question about sport funding and supply is not the amount of funds but rather the direction and aims of sport policy. Finally, the article offers some explanations about the gender inequality detected in some forms of sports participation.

A substantial amount of attention has been devoted towards the potential sport legacy of the Olympic Games. In spite of the increasing academic interest in this topic, there is a knowledge gap as far as sport legacy is concerned by types of different sports. The authors bridge this gap by analysing the evolution of 43 different Olympic/Paralympic sport modalities in the two-year period after the London 2012 Olympics. By using data from the Active People Survey with a sample of 165,000 people annually, and considering some demographic variables and the effect of the economic environment, the paper aims to test the existence of a sport legacy. We have applied time series analysis and ARIMA models for controlling for economic influence and seasonal adjustment and for making comparisons among participation rates. The results show, for the total of the sports analysed, that there were 336,000 individuals who increased their frequency of participation, while there was no significant increase in the number of new participants in these sports. When we develop the analysis for types of sports, London 2012 is positively associated not only with the frequency of participation in some types of sport but also with an increase in the number of new sport participants. Gender and age differences are also detected. The results show the differences of sport legacy by type of sports. Moreover, this research has elucidated an important unrecognised aspect of the effect of the Olympic Games and perhaps major events: that they can become a major policy tool for reversing sporting inequalities.

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