BetHut’s Spin Sports launches new campaign

• Do golf and Formula One price aspiring kids out of the sport?

• It can cost £8,000,000 to progress from karting to the F1 grid

• Education statistics offer revealing insight into diversity of sport

• Football remains an accessible working class sport

Golf and Formula One could be pricing children and people from working families out of their sports, a new study has shown.

Research this week showed that there is a class divide in certain sports in the UK, amid concerns that jobs were going to the ‘private school elite’.

The results showed that football remains a traditionally working class sport, with just 5% of men’s players coming from independent schools, and a study from The Cost of Raising a Pro support these findings with football emerging as one of the cheapest sports to pursue as a youngster.

The study looks at 10 selected sports and breaks down the price of making it from grassroots to the top of the sport, taking into account travel costs, equipment needed, training required and any specialist healthcare that may also be included.

It can be revealed that golf and F1 are the two most expensive sports to pursue to a professional level, with costs of at least £300,000 and £600,000 respectively required to make it in the sport – figures which put them out of the reach of most working families and young children in the world.

The worrying trends and growing costs are supported by the findings that on average 24% of current sportsmen/women attended independent schools, some way up from the average of the general population which sits at just 7%.

It means that professional sport is more out of touch with the people than ever before, all apart from football and boxing, which can be revealed as two of the cheapest sports to pursue to the top after extensive research.

To become a boxer, total expenses are expected to reach around £15,000, while football is slightly more expensive at £23,000.

While they may still seems expensive, they still come out much cheaper than vocational careers such as teaching or becoming a doctor, which both require hefty investment due to tuition fees and exams.

Lewis Hamilton recently admitted he has concerns over the next generation of F1 drivers. The total cost of becoming a world champion is around £8,000,000, and the Mercedes driver accepted it was a concern that there was little diversity in the sport due to the spiralling costs of competing as a youngster putting it out of reach of the average child on a council estate.

The Cost of Raising a Pro takes a look at 10 selected sports and compares the amount of investment needed in a number of different areas (along with the talent) to make it as a professional athlete, and compares to four more everyday jobs.