Results of a flash survey of sports teams from all over the world

Montréal, 16 January 2004 - Since the unfortunate outcome of the FGG's Chicago meeting last November, Rendez-Vous Montréal 2006, has gone back to organising and delivering the best ever Gay Sport and Cultural Festival for the benefit of the GLBT World Community.

Our Board, our public and private sponsors, have decided to fully support the Rendez-Vous Montréal 2006 Organising Committee and thanks to the interest of numerous GLBT sports teams from around the world, the games will take place in Montréal as scheduled. We no longer are looking back, are not sour and are rather very optimistic for the success of the event in 2006. We are simply moving forward.

An Encouraging Survey

Results of a Flash survey of sports teams from all over the world
19 December 2003 to 9 January 2004

Methodology

On 19 December 2003, the Montréal 2006 Marketing Communications Department sent a mass mailing to 845 teams and sporting organizations worldwide. The organizations that responded represent 13,603 members.

The survey had four questions on the subject of developing an international sports association for the GLBT community

Here is a summary of the results:

Question 1

Do you agree with the idea of establishing a democratic, representative international sporting association whose mission would be to develop the gay and lesbian sport movement worldwide and to offer tangible services to its members?

ANSWERS:

It is interesting to note that the vast majority of respondents would like to see the establishment of a democratically-run organization dedicated to the development of the GLBT sporting movement and offering services to members. This organization would also be responsible for producing an event every four years and would provide developmental support to GLBT sports teams.

These points are reflected in the following questions.

Question 2

Please prioritize possible mandates for this new organization from the following list:

1. Developing GLBT sports through a major international sporting event;
2. Providing membership services to local, national and continental sporting organizations;
3. Developing sporting organizations (including clubs and teams) worldwide.

ANSWERS:

Priorities varied according to the type of organization. 84.0% of respondents identified this as the priority, versus 52.9% for other organizations. The results revealed that local sports organizations clearly place a higher priority on the development of new organizations. For other organizations, it is more important to develop the sporting movement by holding an event every four years, compared with local sports organizations (82.4% versus 45.3%). Providing of services was a second choice for all types of respondents. It is clear that the three points raised in the survey are important for all existing organizations, and target the developmental priorities of the GLBT sporting movement.

Question 3

A series of eleven possible types of services an association could provide to its members were listed and respondents were asked to rate each one according to its level of importance. Ratings were given on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 was "extremely important" and 10 was "not at all important".

ANSWER:

Here is the prioritization of needs, in order, according to respondents. This order takes into consideration the data collected in Question 2:

1 - Organize a major international GLBT sporting event every four years;

• 51.5% of all respondents said that this was extremely important to them. The level of consensus was very high amongst most organizations. This is clearly the first priority for most respondents.

2 - Provide expertise and resources to develop new GLBT sporting team worldwide;

• All groups agree that this is a priority and we are seeing the beginning of a consensus on this point.

3 - Promote the various international, continental and national organizations and their activities;

• The promotion of different events is also an important factor for respondents in general.

4 - Assume coordination between international, continental and national organizations;

• The coordination of different organizational levels is also a priority for most organizations other than local ones. We can also see here the beginning of a consensus on this issue.

5 - Manage and coordinate a calendar of all key GLBT international sporting events;

• Established organizations had the strongest reaction to the idea of creating and coordinating a calendar of events. It is clear that this should be one of the priorities of the new association.

6 - Work to promote the GLBT sport movement in other sectors of society (mainstream sports, political arena, media, etc.);