In 2025 Sporting Assets worked with State of Life to calculate the social value of Sporting Capital, the first dedicated social investment fund for sport and physical activity in England.
Sporting Capital Fund 1 (SCF1) was the UK’s first social investment fund designed solely for the sport and physical activity sector. Created in 2017, the £3 million fund was designed and delivered by Sporting Assets and financed through the Growth Fund, a £50m partnership between The National Lottery Community Fund and Better Society Capital, delivered by Access through a range of social investors.
Sporting Assets has already shown that there is a market for patient, flexible, repayable capital in the sector. Thirty four projects stand testament to this. And the portfolio performance speaks for itself, with loan repayments offsetting most of the initial investment.
But the questions remain: How do we know that SCF1 has worked? Has it led to people being more active, resulting in happier and healthier lives, in the communities served by these investments? Sporting Assets asked State of Life to help them address these questions, to see whether its financial success has been matched by a tangible, quantifiable impact on the ground. This report marks our first attempt to estimate the social value that SCF1 has generated. It looks at the impact of the fund to date, and creates a ‘roadmap’ to reliably measure social value in future.
Key Findings
Our headline measures tell a compelling story. We estimate that SCF1 has generated £37.2 million in net social value. That’s after subtracting all costs and making careful adjustments to avoid over-claiming. With a total investment of £3.2 million, every pound invested has yielded £12.52 in social benefit.
The majority of these benefits (£39.0 million) come from a direct wellbeing value to individuals participating in sport and physical activity. These values are robust, underpinned by Treasury-endorsed methods and used most recently by State of Life’s new model of social value for Sport England.
We estimate a further £1.4 million through reduced cost burdens on health services, again following the Sport England model. On top of this, the upside for those taking part in sporting activities funded by SCF1 has been huge.
Read the full report