UK Sport announces record £330m investment for 2028 Los Angeles Games

The Games in Los Angeles are scheduled to take place from 14-30 July 2028. UK Sport, the organization responsible for funding elite sports, has declared a record investment of £330 million for Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic sports in preparation for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Over 50 sports are set to receive benefits, although athletics will experience a budget reduction for the second consecutive funding cycle. Five sports newly added for the 2028 Games—baseball/softball, flag football, lacrosse, Para-climbing, and squash—have all been allocated funding. Conversely, Breaking, which debuted at the Paris Games this summer, is no longer eligible for support, having been removed from the Olympic programme. The total financial commitment is projected to exceed £400 million once athlete performance awards (APAs) are included. These awards are distributed directly to individual athletes to help cover their living and sporting expenses, enabling them to concentrate on competition. In the previous Paris funding cycle, APAs amounted to approximately £70 million, contributing to a total of £385 million. Sally Munday, UK Sport’s chief executive officer, informed BBC Sport that funding should not be perceived as either a “reward” or a “punishment” for results achieved at the Paris Games. Munday stated, “The decision that we’ve made against all the sports is we’ve looked at their potential.” She added, “UK Athletics will receive in excess of £30m for the Olympic and Paralympic programmes and we believe that’s going to put them in a great place to support their athletes in the lead into LA.” In response, Jack Buckner, CEO of UK Athletics, expressed that the organization was “disappointed” by the decision to decrease the sport’s allocation by £1.725 million, emphasizing that 10 medals secured at both the 2023 World Championships and this year’s Olympics “deserved a higher level of investment.” Canoeing also saw a reduction in its funding, by more than £500,000. When considering the overall funding for the Paris 2024 cycle, modern pentathlon and equestrian have been assigned smaller budgets. However, rowing’s funding has increased to £24.85 million from £22.72 million, despite having faced a cut between the Tokyo and Paris cycles. Meanwhile, Chris Grant, chair of the British Basketball Federation, commented that the sport “has entered a new era” with an award of £2.925 million, primarily aimed at fostering the development of the 3×3 format of the game. Great Britain secured 65 medals at this year’s Games and 124 medals at the Paralympics. The nation placed seventh in the Olympic medal table, behind the Netherlands in sixth and France in fifth. Despite this, Munday affirmed that the objective is to be “consistently top five.” Munday remarked, “We’ll be really forensic – were there contributing factors that we could do differently to make sure that we don’t find ourselves in that position again?” She further stated, “We will be leaving no stone unturned to make sure that we’ve really understood what the factors are as to why we came seventh. But we’re very clear we want to be consistently top five.”