Sport England and the ODI are joining forces to use data to get more people active by making it easier for them to find and access physical activities. This collaboration forms part of Sport England’s new strategy, Towards an Active Nation, to make physical activity accessible to everyone.
OpenActive is an ambitious, community-led initiative for change across the sport and physical activity sector, which promotes the use of opportunity data to help people get active. It is being coordinated by the Open Data Institute (ODI), an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organisation.
Our goal is to make data on what, where and when physical activity sessions happen, openly available. This “opportunity data” includes details of a yoga class (“how much will it cost?”) through to badminton court availability (“where and when is a court available?”). It does not include personal data.
We are bringing together sports and physical activity organisations from across the sector to open up their opportunity data, from leisure operators to National Governing Bodies, local sports clubs to event providers, walking groups to fitness instructors. We are also helping other organisations to use this opportunity data to build interesting tools and experiences for consumers.
We are supporting these organisations to:
The OpenActive community was started by a group of enthusiastic sports and physical activity organisations who wanted to reach new audiences with better opportunities to get active, using data and smart technology. The ODI is calling on all organisations interested in using opportunity data to get more people active, to join the community.
OpenActive is supported by the Open Data Institute and Sport England, funded by the National Lottery, and built on top of research co-funded by Innovate UK and incubated in ODINE.
