“An omnisport club is basically a club that brings together several sports within the same entity,” explains Séverine Bardaud. “Inside, you will find practices like football, swimming, or even multisports. And what we advocate is that an omnisport club can have a real impact on its territory.”
The Fédération Française des clubs omnisports is indeed unique in the landscape, as it brings together 650 clubs, which have an average of 2,000 to 2,500 members and about 880,000 practitioners. However, it does not organize any physical activities at all.
It supports the clubs, listens to requests and feedback from the field, coordinates all activities, and addresses issues related to employment, general organization, and societal matters such as combating discrimination, preventing violence, promoting gender equality, and supporting parasports.
“And it is mainly through this approach that we manage to convey a number of messages and promote certain values, since this structure is the interlocutor for public institutions as well as various partners. Therefore, all the values found in all sports are intertwined in an omnisport club,” specifies Denis Lafoux.
“At the Federation, we are very active on these issues, but we see that it is a topic that clubs are increasingly taking on themselves,” emphasizes Séverine Bardaud. “We also build everything we do because clubs are asking us more and more; they want us to intervene to raise awareness among children or to train educators. So, this is a real current issue.”
The sports sector, moreover, is a field that, due to its associative nature and the proximity it allows with coaching, the trust relationship, and the cohesion created within associations, can facilitate dialogue or contact to address these societal issues.
“This omnisport structure means that we are better equipped to respond to public policies and tackle areas that can sometimes be complicated for volunteer leaders of smaller clubs, such as violence prevention, gender equality, and parasports. These are topics that can be quite heavy to implement for leaders. Here, the omnisport structure means they are strong enough, they have employees, so they can implement these initiatives,” concludes Séverine Bardaud.
