Q&A: Bob Elphinston on Youth Olympic Sport

(ATR) Sports federations must embrace digital technology to secure the interest of young people in the Olympics, says International Basketball Federation President Bob Elphinston.

Elphinston, an Australian, has a background in the sport that dates to 1961. For nearly 10 years he held senior executive positions with the bid and organizing committee for the Sydney Olympics.

Elected in 2005 as FIBA President, Elphinston will step down in 2010.

Around the Rings: A decade ago the hot button for Olympic sports might have been the fight against doping. Now it seems that youth – attracting and keeping young people with Olympic sports is the new hot button?

Bob Elphinston: It is, and it comes about through two reasons from what I can see. The IOC’s done a good job at this, and obviously the advice that they’re getting from primarily their television partners is that the level of youth interest in the Olympic Games is declining.

While several viewer numbers are actually increasing, but it’s in the older age range. So it’s a concern that the youth are not watching the sports on television or other means of watching the Games.

So therefore, what the IOC’s been saying and leading this debate, is that sports needs to become more relevant to the youth.

And I think added to that is the ongoing problem, I think generally in sports, and that is, there is quite a strong drop out of youth, of young, of teenagers primarily. It’s not too bad if children are lost from one sport to another. They’re still engaged in sports and physical activity, which is what we want.

But there are too often, this digital revolution that is on everyone’s mind. There’s all these other reasons why kids are dropping out of sports.

ATR: For a sport like basketball though, which we think of as a sport that lots of kids like to follow, teenagers as well, but you’re finding that in basketball as well?

BE: To be honest with you, I don’t have any hard facts in this regard, but anecdotal evidence suggests that through our federations across the world, that we are not increasing the numbers in that youth age group, youth 13 to 18. We have a lot of kids playing basketball in the primary schools, in elementary schools and in often what is known as miniball programs.

Translate those kids into and ensure that they progress from a school program into a club program, it’s not always easy.

So we hope, we are now looking at that and that’s of course why we are using Youth Olympic Games, which is now another excellent IOC initiative.

We used that to launch what we call Street Ball, which is a revamp of the old 3-on-3 half court basketball. This is going to be targeted particularly to the 13 to 18 age group, where it’s less structured, where it’s smaller play area. You can set up a half court basketball goal in a school yard or in your driveway, and get three kids together and play as a team.

ATR: Are there things in common that all the sports need to look at, need to do to revive, to regenerate youth interest?

BE: First of all, we need to recognize that there is a problem, I think everyone understands that. Secondly, we need to understand why? What causes the problem? Thirdly, we need to, in the case of this technology, digital revolution, whatever you want to call it, we don’t need to be scared of it.

In fact, we need to embrace it, this is one of the recommendations that came out of the Olympic Congress.

We must embrace the technology. We must understand that the kids these days have a mobile phone, where they can get information from. More and more, this where they get a lot of sports from. We are already seeing where we can provide a mobile phone service of statistics and images of basketball, so the kids would be able to watch to their dream, their heroes.

And hopefully everyone carries into play. That’s what we need to happen as well. We’ve got to make sure kids don’t just become a catch, so to speak, spend all of their time in front of the television set, or in front of the computer, or with their mobile on their ear.

ATR: As you modify the sports, doesn’t this mean that in 30 years or 40 years, the Olympics will feature 3-on-3 basketball?

BE: Well not necessarily. We have a view that if we stuck to Olympic volleyball, perhaps, when beach volleyball was first introduced there might have been a view at the time, will this ever be in the Olympic Games? Of course now it is a very exciting part of the Olympics.

In the future, who’s to say that there may be beach rugby or 3-on-3. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

I mean, tradition is still important. The traditional Games is what the world understands, but we all know that if the television viewers increase, they have the computers, the Internet, videos, etcetera. They will be the ones that determine if this will be the case.

ATR: Is it more of a challenge for sports, maybe the lower tier sports, say like modern pentathlon or fencing versus basketball, which is a bigger sport, is the challenge greater to get young people in the smaller sports you think?

BE: Absolutely, and I think that is a very, very difficult job that a number of those, less popular sports, if we’re going to use that term. In many cases, they don’t have the necessary resources to be able to devote towards development, and of course, some sports are structured in such a way that they are very costly to get involved in the sport. There’s equipment necessary, and that’s also what we’re trying to do in basketball, to make sure it is less costly, it is more accessible to kids, and that we’ve got to work with the schools systems and educational authorities, and just team sports are relevant.

ATR: You’re an advocate of the Youth Olympic Games. Why do you think that this is going to be a vehicle to get more young people involved in the Olympics?

BE: I think the Youth Olympics Games is very important in the structure of the support system. Three and a half thousand young people from 205 countries are involved.

Hopefully for basketball, this will be the flagship, to promote 3 on 2 half court basketball. We’ve got to use that to try and trigger a movement worldwide, where ultimately we want millions of kids playing the games.

And another thing: we’ve got to use is the imagery and the footage of the Youth Olympics, and hopefully the exposure we get from there.

To subscribe to Around the Rings Click Here

Conducted by Ed Hula

For general comments or questions, click here