What Does Innovation Through Sport Actually Look Like?

Ask someone to picture innovation in sport and they might imagine new technology, high-tech equipment or even changing the rules. 

Through Collective365, a strand of the Olympism365 Innovation Hub focused on collaborative approaches to sport for development, projects explored ideas that looked very different. 

One connects healthcare referrals with opportunities for physical activity in England. Another put a 13-year-old athlete from Wales at the center of conversations about how his sport should develop. In India, work centered on sport and inclusion expanded into bodily autonomy and gender-based violence prevention. In Nigeria, football became a route into agriculture and employment. 

The Olympism365 Innovation Hub is a collaboration between the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Beyond Sport and Women Win designed to inspire and support innovation in sport for development. Through Collective365, organizations with different expertise came together to develop and test approaches connecting sport with wider social challenges. 

Collectively supported by more than $470,000 in funding, the projects worked across 13 countries. What emerged was not one model for innovation, but a series of examples that looked beyond sport itself, using it as a route into healthcare, education, employment, inclusion and community connection. 

Looking beyond the sport itself 

In Australia, innovator The University of Queensland worked with athletes and coaches to co-design a Support Needs Assessment Tool for Sport and Exercise (SNAT-SE). This digital platform is designed to improve disability inclusion in community sport. 

Technology itself is only part of the story. The project asked athletes what they needed from coaches and built those experiences into the tool from the beginning. 

Ryan, an autistic athlete involved in testing it, explained the difference simply: 

“The SNAT-SE gave me the words to tell coaches what help I needed so I could understand what they wanted me to do.” 

Elsewhere, London Sport explored how health and sport systems can work more closely together by developing digital tools that enable healthcare providers to refer people directly to local opportunities for getting active. What began as an ambitious concept is now being tested across local authorities and NHS (National Health Service) Trusts. 

Neither example is about inventing a new way to play sport. Instead, both look at the structures around participation and ask where people are being lost, excluded or left without the support they need. 

That shift showed up elsewhere in the cohort too. 

In India, a collective led by Tarapur Social Development Society combined sport, health assessments and gender-based violence prevention for women and girls with intellectual disabilities. What began with a focus on sport and inclusion grew into work supporting self-confidence, communication and awareness of personal rights and boundaries. Women in the program developed deep relationships through self-help groups – safe circles that combined sports training with psychosocial support.  

One participant, Priya, described how a simple activity helped her understand bodily autonomy: 

“I love my circle because it helps me understand that my body is mine and my space is mine.” 

Tarapur also worked with universities, researchers and community organizations to build new evidence around disability, sport and wellbeing, exploring how that learning could inform future programs and policy. 

When sport opens the door to something else 

Several projects used sport less as the destination and more as the reason people walked through the door. 

In Nigeria, AKHIN Africa combined football, agriculture, education and vocational training through its AKHIN Street Football for Agripreneur initiative. Forty young people received training, 20 returned to formal education and 15 established farming businesses. 

One participant joined while living on the streets and struggling with addiction. 

“Give me a chance. If I don’t do well, return me back to the street.” 

Nine months later, he had completed the program, committed to recovery and become a trainer with the organization. 

In Portugal, Social Innovation Sports Hub’s Welcome Sports Club created weekly futsal, cricket and women’s activities for migrants, refugees and local residents. Alongside sport, participants could access career workshops, mentorship and opportunities to connect with the wider community. Twelve young people secured their first professional experiences through opportunities connected to the project. 

Masoma, who moved to Portugal from Afghanistan, described what that meant to her: 

“The Welcome Sports Club is much more than sport. It is a place where I found freedom, belonging and the confidence to believe that I can build a new future.” 

And in Kenya, the Football for Future Innovators project brought together Matasia Trans Capability, Resilient Hearts Africa and Spectrum of Care for Homelessness to support refugees, asylum seekers and marginalized young people through football alongside STEM education, healthcare, mental health support, vocational training and shelter. 

For Carol, a refugee experiencing homelessness when she joined, shelter changed what was possible. 

“Before joining, every day was about survival. I had nowhere to feel safe and no one I could turn to. Receiving shelter changed everything.” 

Sport was present in all three projects. But so were housing, employment, education and healthcare. The innovation was often in how those pieces were brought together. 

Giving participants a real say 

One of the clearest examples came from Ashoka Sport for Changemaking’s Reimagining Youth Sport Collective, which explored what happens when young people are given a greater say in shaping sport itself. The collective encompasses voices from the USA, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Great Britain and Kenya.  

Rather than positioning youth only as participants, the collective involved them directly in research, program design and decision-making. 

One of those decision-makers was James Taylor, a 13-year-old freestyle football player from Cardiff, Wales. 

After identifying barriers facing younger athletes, James helped design a youth-led initiative that trained hundreds of young people. He also brought together young freestylers from 10 countries for conversations to help shape the future of competition in the sport. 

“I want to help tell the story of freestyle, and become part of that story myself, to show decision-makers that this isn’t an anti-social activity, it’s a sport that helps with resilience, with confidence, with connecting to people all over the world.” 

There is nothing particularly novel about asking young people what they think. Giving them genuine influence over what happens next is harder. 

Collective365 repeatedly points toward that distinction. Collaboration was not simply organizations delivering different parts of the same program. In several projects, it meant allowing people with different kinds of expertise, including lived experience, to change the direction of the work itself. 

Innovation can also mean adapting when reality intervenes 

Not every project followed a straight line from idea to outcome. 

In the U.S., Boys & Girls Clubs of the Tennessee Valley, for example, expanded its health and wellbeing work through sports, nutrition education, cooking clubs, gardening and activities supporting young people’s social and emotional wellbeing. More than 3,100 young people participated. 

When one partner lost federal funding for nutrition programming, the work had to change. Cooking clubs continued through staff, volunteers and community partnerships. 

For young people in the program, soccer became a source of confidence, friendship and belonging. Cooking Club gave others a chance to learn practical skills and connect with peers. 

That kind of adaptation can be easy to overlook when innovation is presented as something polished and new. In practice, it can also mean responding when plans stop working, funding changes or communities tell you they need something different. 

Where the work is going next 

Many of the Collective365 projects are now building on what they tested. London Sport is expanding its referral platform, The University of Queensland is working with sporting organizations to adopt its disability inclusion tool and Social Innovation Sports Hub has secured new funding to continue the Welcome Sports Club. 

What stands out across the cohort is how quickly the work moved beyond the boundaries of a traditional sport program. A football project became connected to farming. A disability inclusion tool became a way for athletes to communicate what they need from coaches. Sport linked people to healthcare, shelter and their first professional experiences. 

If there is a common thread running through these projects, it is a willingness to look beyond sport for answers. The strongest ideas came from an invitation to collaborate – with healthcare providers, researchers, employers, community organizations and participants. By opening those doors, these organizations expanded what sport could do, who it could reach and what became possible for the people at the center of the work. 

Invest in the Olympism365 Innovation Hub   

Cultivate an ecosystem of innovators and social enterprises across the sport, social impact and tech sectors through the Olympism365 Hub. Launched with seed funding provided by the IOC, Beyond Sport and Women Win are seeking partners to drive further innovation.  If you are interested in investing in the Hub and our innovators, contact us at [email protected].