Sport policy in Finland: from class divisions to depoliticisation, from sport for all to business like any other?

Sport in Finland has a fundamental societal role as the nation’s favourite pastime, serving also various instrumentally defined social goals. Finland for a long time combined significant successes in elite sport with high levels of physical activity among the population. In recent years, the successes, particularly in individual sports, declined but Finland remains the European country with the highest share of the population being physically active. The paper approaches these peculiarities, tracking Finnish sports’ historical institutional roots and transformations over the years. Elaborating on the recent reforms of the sports policy, the article points to two crucial processes. The first concerns the transformation of sports policy in accordance with neoliberal ideas, whereas the second relates to the depoliticisation of sport-related policymaking in Finland. The latter phenomenon is particularly interesting given the long-lasting tradition of class-based, political divisions relating to the field of sport in the Finnish context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]