While a decrease of 1.3 points isn't drastically significant, it does suggest a minor softening in payment practices within the sports industry year-over-year. The reduced sample size in 2024 makes it important to note that this could be due to many factors. It may warrant further investigation to determine if it signals a wider trend and if this may have any knock-on effects, such as the need to use a late payment calculator more frequently to assess the financial impact of overdue invoices.
One-line summary: The average payment performance score in the sports industry decreased from 78.3 (based on 19 companies) in 2023 to 77.0 (based on 13 companies) in 2024.

We analysed over 100,000 published UK payment-practice reports. Late payment is falling — from 20% of invoices paid outs
How UK companies' payment practices changed in 2025 — the biggest improvers, the firms slipping, and the strongest new e
The UK agriculture sector is significantly outperforming the UK average for payment practices, suggesting a degree of fi
The year-on-year decline of 0.1 points, while statistically insignificant, suggests a stagnation in payment performance