National structures for building and managing sport facilities: a comparative analysis of the Nordic countries

Sport facilities are instrumental in keeping the population fit and healthy. Governments worldwide are thus engaged in devising policies, programs and projects for building such facilities, with the aim of providing citizens with opportunities for a healthy lifestyle. This feature is prominent in the Nordic countries, which have incorporated sport, leisure and physical activity into their universal welfare models. Understanding policies and politics for building sports facilities has therefore become a cornerstone in the understanding of conditions for sport and physical activity for all. In this paper, we investigate and compare the national structures for building and managing sports facilities in the Nordic countries, in order to add to the understanding of how policies and politics for building sport facilities can add to or hamper the sport-for-all ambitions salient in most of today's western societies.