Currently, both the world of sports and the labour market suffer two deep crises. While the first sees a decrease in the number of federated athletes and the formal use of sports facilities, the second does not find sustainable strategies to create decent jobs for the new generations, a sector that maintains high rates of unemployment or underemployment and resignation. The project Skills by Sport for the Mediterranean (S4MED), funded by the European Commission through its Erasmus + Sport Programme, arose as an initiative to unite these two fields. Specifically, the initiative analyses how sport skills can help to develop more skilled human resources and explores how sport skills can be transferred into the labour market context. Based on the analysis of the results obtained through focus groups with individual and collective sports coaches, this article describes coaches and sport instructors’ capacity to use sport as a vehicle for development of skills and competencies for a better employability and demonstrates the usefulness that the world of sports can have as a factor of social impact, development, and as a transmitter of necessary skills to effectively evolve in the labour market. It presents an empirical evaluation that confirms this union and proposes an axis of intervention and advocacy to promote sport policies as a key axis for sustainable social development.

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Sport,Crises,Labour market,Youth,Competences,Skills,Social Impact