Fighting to survive: the precarity of grassroots boxing as a leisure practice – a Bourdieusian perspective

This study explores the structural challenges facing grassroots boxing clubs in their pursuit of long-term sustainability, with a focus on how club leaders navigate the intersection of community leisure provision, economic precarity, and institutional demands. Drawing on semi-structured online interviews with 12 club leaders across England, the research offers insight into the lived realities of sustaining boxing as a form of accessible, community-based leisure. By applying Bourdieu’s framework, the study identifies three interrelated thematic pressures: (1) precarity as a normalised practice, (2)capital conversion and institutional misrecognition, and (3) symbolic domination and governance disconnect. Through this lens, the analysis reveals how club leaders contend with both material constraints and symbolic struggles for recognition, legitimacy, and autonomy. The findings suggest that sustainability in grassroots boxing is not simply a matter of finance, but of navigating a field structured by unequal distributions of capital, institutional power, and cultural legitimacy. The study calls for more inclusive governance and funding mechanisms that recognise the embedded knowledge, labour, and community value of grassroots sport