Effects of different policy approaches on sport facility utilisation strategies

•We show how public policies influence utilisation of sport facilities.•Private non-profit organizations’ motivations are both knightish and knavish.•Sport facilities should have high utilisation to maximise the public benefit derived from public investment.•New Public Management, Governance or Budget policies influence sport facility utilisation through the choice of strategies.•The effect of policies depends on the role of voluntary sport organisations in sport facilities. The consequences of subsidising sport facilities have so far not been a focus of sport facilities research. In this article, we propose a conceptual framework for assessing the effects that different public subsidies have on the utilisation of private non-profit sport facilities. Based on theories drawn from the public administration literature three different subsidy schemes are introduced: New Public Management, Governance and Budget. How they will influence the utilisation of a sport facility is assessed using insights from institutional and motivational theory from political science along with the role the voluntary sport organisations play in sport facilities. The resulting conceptual framework consists of twelve different strategies. It is argued that it is likely that a sport facility will choose one or more of these, and which strategies it chooses will impact the level of utilisation. The aim of the article is to show plausible conjectures for future empirical research into how to increase sport facility utilisation via different policies and thus inform future research into the complex interplay between the public sector, sport facilities and voluntary sport organisations.