Perceived liability and risk management trends and issues impacting the delivery of recreational sports programs in the 21st century

Over the course of the past 30 years, a significant increase in the amount of litigation in recreational sports has been noted in the literature. This threat of litigation has created an additional burden upon the recreational sport practitioner in managing risk. While no decline in the frequency of claims is anticipated, insight into the perceived liability and risk management trends would better prepare recreational sport practitioners to deal with future legal challenges.;Cited by the literature as the most often used technique in forecasting the future, the Delphi technique was determined as the most appropriate for this study. The panel of experts, comprised of recreational sports administrators and sport liability scholars was selected through a network sampling technique with the executive directors of selected professional organizations encompassing recreational sports programs in commercial, private and public settings serving as the key informants in the identification of the experts. A classical Delphi was implemented with each of the three rounds identified by its own questionnaire, and was distributed to the panel of experts electronically via an Internet web site. The fourth round was implemented to gain the jury's opinions regarding the implications of the trends.;Identifiable key trends regarding liability and risk management that were perceived to have an impact upon the delivery of recreational sports programs were found. Over the course of three-round Delphi, the jury rated 11 trends as having an extreme or great impact upon the future delivery of recreational sports programs. In a test of the mean differences by the two groups on the impact rating, only one of the key trends was found to be significant at an alpha level of .05.;The challenges created by liability will continue to impact the delivery of recreational sports program into the 21st century as evidenced by the identification of 11 key trends. The primary method of recreational sports practitioners for confronting these liability challenges is through the implementation of sound risk management plans.