Sport to be measured by peoplemeters

The private visits and lobbing within the Ministry of Education; or personal sport preferences of ministers should not affect the allocation of state grants for sport anymore. Last year current head of Ministry Eugen Jurzyca set up a team of experts that had to create a new system based on clearly defined criteria, which allows athletes and their federations to divide a support of around 30 million euros dedicated for sport each year. The popularity should be one of the points that determine the amount of subsidy and should be measured by the surveys, opinion polls and media monitoring. Several sports officials objected to reform shortly after it became clear, how would allocation of grants look like this year.
 
Tough mathematics

Football player's agent Jozef Tokoš, consultant and member of the MESA 10 Jan Marušinec, coach Ján Filc, Secretary of Slovak Tennis Association Igor Moška and manager of Team Slovakia Richard Galovič - put together a complicated mathematical formulas, charts and lists of popular sports on the basis of which the amount of subsidy should be calculated. Currently the main criterion is the success, but creators of the reform expressed opinion that until now the support for each sport was determined mainly by the results of  negotiations between the specific sport federation and the Ministry, that were influenced by the personal contacts and affinity. After the reform, success will remain as the criterion in the formula for calculating the amount of grants but it would be multiplied by popularity and other variables.
 
President of the Slovak Olympic Committee František Chmelár and head of Confederation of Sport Unions Marián Kukumberg do not agree with criterion of popularity. The problem is that it is difficult to express popularity in numbers. Creators of new reform attempted to do this. There are three indicators. The international survey within TV rating of specific sport, representative domestic   survey about popularity and the monitoring of occurrence in national media. In Slovakia the most popular sport is ice hockey, followed by football, swimming, cycling and tennis.  Reformers want to force the sport federations to expand their sport and thus compete each other in the "battle" of annual subsidies.

Enough room for improvement

At press conference Kukumberg stated that there are some negative impacts of assessment on media monitoring. For example he noted that the conflict between British boxer Chisora and other competitors was frequently appearing in media. M. Kukumberg asked reporters: '' Is it fair that box should get extra points for the negative popularity like that? '' The reform team argues that there is a minimum of these scandals in Slovakia and that the news like this should be easily filtered out from the survey. In addition the media monitoring is just a small part of the whole package that contains large number of criteria.

 
The speech of the president of the Slovak Olympic Committee in the national radio was significantly critical to the reform. Assessment of popularity was criticized because, as he said, it was based on a survey from France. (In fact this survey has been conducted in 30 countries for several years). Another problem was that there were only 88 respondents from Bratislava included in a representative survey of the popularity of sports among the Slovaks. In one thousand of respondents the number of Slovaks form Bratislava corresponds to the population of the capital in relation to the whole country. The constructive criticism is that the foreign people meter-data do not include several disciplines, which are seeking money in Slovakia.  Representatives of the Ministry of Education admit that the new system is not perfect and can be improved in future. For example by improving research on popularity of sports. The last autumn survey was asking  about to the overall popularity of a particular discipline and in addition there was a question of which sport would respondents support. Just after ice hockey the second most common response was tourism.

 
The limited decrease

''To avoid the extinction of any sports federation, financing reform offers a five-year transitional period. During this period the height of the allocated grants for all federations will not fall by more than 10 percent. Five years period is sufficient time for union bosses to work on individual criteria.'' said sports manager Richard Galovič. They should try to expand the popularization of a particular sport according to the youth. Number of children and youth is also the criterion in which the unions should receive support. Reformers wanted to avoid inflating the union with people who attend multiple disciplines. Unions should be motivated to educate children to do sports. What should be the main objectives of state support for sport? R. Galovič said:'' For example shooting would get less money than previously according to the new rules. Shooting could be very popular among young people and this is the way how they can bring more money for the union.''

 
The real problem

The real conflict between authors of the reform and the critics is probably not a new philosophy of the rules, but the amount of grants for this year which result from the new model of financing. In 2011 the most money were allocated for the Slovak ice hockey federation. (2,74 mil. euro) In 2012 this position should be overtaken by the Slovak Football Association with support of 3,04 mil. Considerably more money would be allocated for Slovak Tennis Association and cycling federation. Critics do not like it because there is a football agent, coach and the head of tennis association among the authors of the reform. The amount of subsidies for volleyball, shooting, biathlon or Canoe unions will decrease but allocated grants for unions  will not decrease by more than 10 percent.

The whole funding package of the Ministry of Education intended to support the sport increased significantly compared to last year- from 20.8 million euros to 30.4 million. The Ministry has divided part of funds among unions for this year without using the new formula. In most cases all the unions and federations already get 90 percent of money from the previous year. Based on the request, which ends this Friday, the rest of the money will be divided by popularity, youth support and all other criteria from the reform. Although critics have tried to lobby by the President Ivan Gašparovič, he stated that the distribution of money among athletes is not in his competence.