Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome this opportunity to reflect on what has been an extraordinary year for sport in Wales. I’d particularly like to mention the incredible performance of Wales’s men’s football team in the European championships, and the strong Welsh presence in the record-breaking Team GB Olympic squad. It is now great to see our Paralympic athletes continuing our medal-winning success in Rio.

As our football team successfully begin their World Cup qualifying campaign, it is good to be able to stand here and think that Wales has a realistic chance of qualifying for 2018. In France, the team achieved more than we could have imagined, and those magnificent fans who went to Europe to support the team set a standard for behaviour and sportsmanship that most other countries would struggle to emulate.

We continue to support grass-roots and community sport as the foundation for sustaining sport success. For example, the Welsh Football Trust receives nearly £1 million a year of Welsh Government money to support the development of grass-roots football. This year, they used the European championships as a catalyst to get more people to play football, holding 100 community football recruitment days across Wales and continuing to engage with schools through their Play More Football programme.

The success of Welsh athletes in the Olympics is something that we can all take pride in. Although the Welsh contingent made up just 7 per cent of Team GB, they produced 11 medals, including four golds. Of course, UK Sport are responsible for developing potential medal winners to the point where they can compete successfully at the highest level, but the responsibility for talent spotting and development rests with home countries.

Sport Wales invests over £10 million a year to support national governing bodies’ efforts to develop talent pathways and to provide elite support for promising athletes in Wales. Consequently, we have achieved our best ever results—first in Glasgow and now in Rio. I’m pleased say that ministerial colleagues and I are supportive of the current chair’s review of Sport Wales. It’s vital that we have a sports body that can not only build on past successes but also confidently face the challenges ahead of us.

Just as our sportsmen and women are achieving record-breaking feats on the world stage, at home we have been hosting a thrilling programme of major international sporting events, further demonstrating Wales’s pedigree as a world-class events destination. In March, some of the world’s best long-distance runners pounded the streets of Cardiff in the World Half Marathon Championship, one of the world’s top three athletics events. In May, Velothon Wales returned to the roads of south-east Wales. In only its second year, the event received largely positive coverage, and organisers are currently in conversation with relevant partners about 2017.

In June, we welcomed back the UK leg of the Extreme Sailing Series. Once again, Cardiff Bay provided a stadium backdrop for one of the world’s most spectacular sailing events. In July, the Principality Stadium hosted the British speedway grand prix, part of the speedway world championship. This is one of the great sporting weekends in our capital city, attracting thousands of overseas visitors, and last week, the UK’s biggest professional cycling road race, the Tour of Britain, travelled through Wales with Olympians Sir Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish and, of course, our own Owain Doull competing. Our 2016 programme of supported events will come to a close at the end of October with the final round of the World Rally Championship—Wales Rally GB.

These global events provide a significant boost to the Wales economy. These events alone will attract around 330,000 visitors to Wales, spending an additional £44 million and supporting over 1,000 jobs. They also raise Wales’s international profile through global media coverage, and promote participation. Let’s not forget that we also support a thriving portfolio of arts and cultural events. This year, we are supporting 20 events across Wales that offer a rich and diverse range of cultural experiences. They include: Machynlleth Comedy Festival, Focus Wales, Hay Festival, Gregynog Festival, Pride Cymru and Roald Dahl’s City of the Unexpected, and today it is 100 years since Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff.

Exciting times lie ahead as we prepare to host some of the biggest and most prestigious sporting events in the world. Following the success of our national team in strengthening Wales’s position in world football, next year the Principality Stadium hosts the UEFA Champions League final. This will be another historic first for Wales. With the tournament already under way, the ‘road to Cardiff’ is now very much alive. A few days later, Glamorgan Cricket will host matches in the International Cricket Council Champions Trophy. And a summer of sporting legends will continue as Royal Porthcawl Golf Club stages the Senior Open Championship for the second time. The 2014 event was hailed a huge success, earning praise from world-class golfers, including Tom Watson.

In 2018, the Volvo Ocean Race will arrive in Cardiff for a two-week stopover. This nine-month around-the-world human adventure is one of the longest and toughest endurance events in the world, and Wales will host the finish of the highly prized transatlantic leg. And in 2019, Glamorgan Cricket will once again be in the spotlight with the Cricket World cup—cricket’s most prestigious global tournament.

We cannot rest on our laurels. If we are to continue to build Wales’s reputation as the destination of choice for global event owners, we have to be proactive and strategic about our approach. With that in mind we are currently undertaking a horizon-scanning exercise to identify new opportunities for attracting more major international events to all parts of Wales. We are actively engaging with key partners and stakeholders in the public and private sectors in Wales and beyond to secure their views. This includes all 22 local authorities, Sport Wales and UK Sport. At an international level, our work is being informed by intelligence gathered from our network of contacts representing the entire spectrum of the international sporting event industry. We have identified a range of potential hosting targets and we are continuing to assess the relative costs and benefits of these events. We remain ambitious in our outlook and committed to attracting more major international events to all parts of Wales, but we have to temper that ambition with a touch of realism. We face some stiff challenges. The current financial climate and pressures on public sector budgets is a big challenge for all of us, and we need to work with event industry partners to develop more commercially focused business models and identify new innovative funding streams such as Crowdfunder and Kickstarter.

The other big issue for us is the lack of venues capable of hosting major international events—a key reason why the Cabinet reluctantly decided not to bid for the 2026 Commonwealth Games. The feasibility work that we did for the Commonwealth Games highlighted the need for significant investment in, for example, athletics, aquatics and velodrome facilities. I have announced that we will undertake a review of sports facilities in Wales to help ensure that Wales is in the strongest possible position to bid for and host high-profile sporting events in the future. Taking account of that work we will continue our positive dialogue with Commonwealth Games Wales and the Commonwealth Games Federation in relation to a potential bid for Wales in the future. We want to continue to work with both organisations to explore flexible options for a bid that delivers value for money and benefits for the whole of Wales.

Wales is clearly punching well above its weight in the international events arena. In a short space of time we have become a serious player in a fiercely competitive global market, and we remain committed to attracting more major international sporting and cultural events, which improve the lives and well-being of people and communities across Wales.