Government Expenditure and Sports Outcomes: An Empirical Evaluation of Public Sports Investment in India

Over the past two decades, observing the evolution of the Indian sports ecosystem marked by increasing investment into sports and recognizing the lack of established models to evaluate its effectiveness, this study aimed to investigate the impact of government sports funding on athletic achievements and participation in India. The research employed a quantitative approach by analyzing trends of budget allocations to autonomous sporting bodies like the Sports Authority of India (SAI) between FY 2000-01 and 2022-23, using publicly available data sourced from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MYAS) Budget Grants. Further trend analysis was conducted on total SAI achievements and the number of trainees from 2015 to 2022, collated from SAI Annual Reports. Moreover, a correlational analysis was used to assess the relationship between funding, total achievements, and the number of trainees under SAI. The results suggested a strong positive correlation (r = 0.8) between total achievements and number of trainees; however, no statistically significant relationship was found between funding and either achievements or trainee numbers. Thereafter, this paper highlights the inefficiency of India's event-driven sports funding strategy and emphasizes the importance of non-budgetary factors like policy redesigns and government schemes in increasing grassroots participation and driving athletic achievements.