Claims by ministers that hosting the 2018 World Cup would increase participation in football are undermined by the findings of Game Plan, the government-commissioned report into the London 2012 Olympic bid. It found a lack of data to support the theory that hosting “mega-events” prompts more people to play sport.

England’s bid for the World Cup is seen as the crowning glory in Britain’s “greatest decade in sporting history” that includes the London 2012 Olympics and the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Gordon Brown said that he wanted “every region of the country to share in the benefits of these sporting events”.

Richard Caborn, the government representative on the World Cup bid, said that it would “connect young people back into sport through the power of football”.

Lord Coe told the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2005 that London would inspire more young people to become Olympians. The double Olympic champion explained how watching the 1968 Mexico Games on a black-and-white TV at school had changed his life. He said: “We can no longer take it for granted that young people will choose sport.”

After being awarded the Games, ministers set a target of increasing the number of people active in sport by a million by 2012. They have used the Olympics as a driving force to meet this target. Yet the central planks of justification for the Olympics, increased participation and regeneration, are knocked down by Game Plan. “Hosting events does not necessarily lead to increases in mass participation . . . hosting events is not an effective, value-for-money method of achieving either a sustained increase in mass participation or sustainable international success,” it states. “There is little statistical or economic evidence to suggest that such regeneration impacts are significant.”

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said: “We accept that this is a challenge.”

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