Sports governing bodies have been encouraged to engage with “ethnic media outlets” in order to appeal to potential black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) board members.
According to Arun Kang, chief executive of equality body Sport Equals, NGBs needed to develop a “more sustained approach” to attract diversity to their boards, and would have to reach out to different audiences rather than just advertise vacant positions.
He told
Sports Management that there was a “huge network of Chinese TV channels, Asian magazines and The Voice newspaper” which could prove to be fertile ground for building relationships with communities.
“A good example is the Islam Channel,” he said. “It’s always looking for content, and it would be a good idea for an organisation wanting, for example, Asian women to apply for board positions to go on one of the shows and be interviewed and advertise off the back of that.
“They can’t just put one advert out and say ‘we didn’t get any interest’, but that’s the experience I’ve hard with some organisations.”
While the soon-to-be-published UK Sports Governance Code will almost certainly specify targets or ambitions for BAME representation on NGB boards, only three per cent of board members within these organisations come from ethnic backgrounds. Around 13 per cent of the British population is BAME.
To read the full interview with Arun Kang from the September edition of
Sports Management, click
here.
