Two thirds of Brits back government funding being used to propel Team GB athletes to gold medals at Paris 2024.
Exclusive polling shared with City A.M. shows that 67 per cent of Brits support continued state funding for athletes.
That’s lower than the likes of Indonesia (91 per cent), Ireland (75 per cent) and Australia (71 per cent) but tops nations including the United States (60 per cent) and host nation France (48 per cent), who rank lowest out of the 33 nationalities and over 24,000 individuals asked in the Ipsos Global Advisor Survey for 2024.
It comes as the new Labour government weighs up the extent to which it is prepared to back elite British sportspeople with the public purse.
UK Sport received a total funding package of £221m for the Tokyo 2020 Games cycle, up from £37m for Sydney at the turn of the century.
Backing Team GB
The Boris Johnson government confirmed in 2022 that annual funding for Paris 2024 preparations would rise by £23.4m per year to £77.4m covering both the Olympics and Paralympics.
The former Prime Minister said at the time: “This increased funding will support Team GB to deliver their best possible performances in three years’ time in Paris.”
The data also shows that Britain ranks among the top five countries in believing the Paris 2024 Olympic Games should go ahead regardless of “the world’s economy and conflict, for example, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East”.
Furthermore just two fifths of Brits believe there’s too much nationalism on show at the quadrennial event, similar levels to the USA, Canada and Ireland.
Brits are most interested in following athletics (38 per cent) with gymnastics, football, aquatics and cycling making up the top five.
The least interesting events, according to Ipsos data, are archery, shooting, breakdancing, handball, surfing, judo and sport climbing – all at 3 per cent.
The Olympic Games officially get underway tomorrow with the opening ceremony along the River Seine on Friday evening but the action began yesterday with the start of the football and rugby sevens tournaments.
Tomorrow sees archery – featuring Great Britain – as well as football, rugby sevens and handball with gold medals handed out from Saturday.