Background Sport is a very popular recreational activity for young people in Sweden and more than 80 per cent have at some time been a member of a sports club. Without the many coaches and leaders (> 600,000), it would be impossible to run the Swedish sports movement. Despite many people being involved in leadership roles, the sports movement in Sweden continually wrestles with the issues of a shortage of leaders and how to encourage more people to become involved (Eriksson 2006). To support sporting activities for children and young people, the Swedish Parliament decided in 2007 to invest SEK 2 billion over a four-year period. This initiative was given the name Idrottslyftet and one of its goals was to recruit and retain young leaders.   Research questions, methods, and theoretical framework The aim of the study is to examine the investment made in young leaders, and the following questions are thus posed: How have the various projects been structured and what were the desired objectives? Which young leaders is the project aimed at and who is the ‘right’ kind of leader? The data consists of focus group interviews, development plans, and project descriptions for the initiatives taken to recruit leaders. Using qualitative text analysis, the texts were examined with the aim of contextualizing the actual descriptions and interview statements. The study has a cultural-sociological perspective based on Bourdieu’s theories and concepts in order to understand which types of leaders initiatives are feasible in the social context, which here constitutes the Swedish sports movement (Bourdieu 1977, 1990).   Research findings The analysis shows that investments have consisted mainly of training programmes to recruit new leaders, in which the belief in the sports movement as an educational environment has functioned as the underlying value structure of the content of the training programmes. The master–pupil relationship appears to be a given model. Young leaders and older adults are described as opposites. Males are interested in sport-specific knowledge, while females want to learn about diet and health. In conclusion, the findings indicate that within the Swedish sports movement, there is a belief that a re-examination of the traditionally prominent values is required if young people are to be recruited as leaders.