Sport in the United Kingdom sports combined have less than one-third the participation of football. Additionally, a British sport journalist pointed out that football academies are "really bad at letting players out of the system who aren't going to make it", frequently keeping players until age 17 or 18, beyond an age at which they can reasonably be developed for top-level basketball. Another issue is politically related. Basketball is not played in the elite fee-paying secondary schools that produce a disproportionate share of the UK's political leaders. Also, several British basketball insiders have cited problems with the sport's governance within the UK, with Kevin Routledge,
Obesity in the United Kingdom a part of the London 2012 legacy, Prime Minister David Cameron also announced an annual £150 million ($227-USD) boost for school sport. The funding is "ring-fenced", meaning it can only be spent on sports activities such as after school clubs, coaching and dedicated sports programmes. Prompting criticism about mixed messaging, Official Sponsors of the 2012 London Olympics included McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Cadbury. In the 2016 United Kingdom budget, the British Government announced the introduction of a sugar tax on the soft drinks industry, which came into effect in April 2018. Beverage manufactures are taxed according to the volume of sugar