Financing of sport.
The sports environment is going through a difficult time. Right now, the game is about who will have the main say in the matter of distributing billions for athletes from the state budget in the coming years. What will be the criteria and keys for distribution? Who will be the recipients of the financial contributions? Will it be athletes, coaches, clubs or associations, or perhaps sports complexes, gyms, halls? All categories at once or just some?
When Sazka went into bankruptcy in 2011, it looked like times were really bad for sports associations and clubs. Already six years earlier (2005) there had been significant time delays in the payment of the so-called Sazka proceeds and a reduction in the amounts transferred from Sazka through the CSTV to sport. The scandals surrounding the bribery of football umpires were just an entertainment insert for the public. In 2011, the sportsmen lost their golden goose with golden eggs named Sazka for good. Subsequently, there has been some stabilisation allowing national teams and development to be funded and with good economic staff, the associations have generally managed to do this. This was achieved partly through pressure from the athletes themselves, and partly through activities that were the result of a power struggle between the CSTV (later CUS), the Czech Olympic Committee, the Ministry of Education and other influential groups active in the field of sport. The factor of the large number of registered athletes began to play a significant role. Many understood that this was an interesting constituency that deserved to be addressed. Some athletes also understood this. With their amateurish and dilettantish approach to political marketing, they missed the opportunity to have a more significant say in social events (sporci.cz). Just when the ongoing boom seemed to be helping almost indefinitely, it turned out that nothing lasts forever. The inability to produce conceptual materials on the basis of consensus has crippled the functioning of established money pipelines. And more serious problems have arisen. The arrests of Deputy Kratochvílová and the footballer Pelta initiated the suspension of some grant chapters and undermined the already weakening trust in the fair functioning of the grant processes and the system of sports funding in general. The interrogations of Zdeněk Bříza (MŠMT), Sonia Fáberová (MHMP) and Miroslav Jansta (ČUS), together with the weakening position of the ČOV, indicated more than clearly that a new game is being played, at the end of which the sporting environment will get a political checkmate or at most a draw. The only way to be considered a win would be to get sport out of politics, ideally in the form of financial independence for the whole environment. Will politicians allow this to happen? I doubt it.