Is the sport nation physically active? - Determinants of the frequency, trends and inequalities of sport and physical activity in Hungary in 2024

When examining Hungarian society's relationship with sports, we may have mixed feelings. On one hand, we consider ourselves a sports nation, while on the other hand, more than two-thirds of the adult population do not engage in sports as part of their daily routine. The realization of the dual identity of a sports nation and a nation of athletes was already set as a goal in the 2007 Sport XXI National Sports Strategy. However, according to research from the past two decades, we have not come closer to achieving the latter—namely, increasing the physical activity of the population. Sports policy continues to focus on maintaining international success in elite sports, particularly Olympic achievements, and—despite occasional emerging crises—this intention has been successful at the level of results. Nonetheless, this prioritization has led to the significant allocation of sports funding over the past two decades toward elite sports and its related youth development, while funding for recreational sports has consistently remained below 5%. Despite the declared concept of a sports nation, it can be stated that in the past decade, there have been very few significant initiatives supporting adult recreational sports, and while spending on sports equipment and services is increasing, this can be explained by higher spending among active athletes, rather than a larger proportion of the population engaging in physical activity (Szabó et al., 2021). It has become clear that sporting success does not directly result in an improvement in the frequency of sports participation among the population, despite the well-known health and psychosocial benefits of physical activity. Since the 1990s, promoting health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) has gradually entered the focus of the healthcare sector in international policy, and in 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued guidelines recommending 150 minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity per week for adults (WHO, 2020). In the updated version from 2020, special emphasis is placed on the fact that any amount of physical activity is better than complete inactivity, meaning that partial fulfillment of these recommendations has a significant impact on health maintenance. This could potentially lead to a reduction in healthcare spending through the reduction of lifestyle-related, non-communicable diseases, if more people achieved the recommended levels of physical activity (Ács et al., 2020). While this is an integral part of domestic policy strategies, the trends of the past decades show no progress in this regard.