Bread, circuses and concrete

Published in SME daily

Renovating regional stadiums should be the responsibility of their owners and local governments, not the state budget. The 45-million-euro allocation lacks clear rules or any competitive process.

Imagine this: 20 football stadiums renovated, a brand-new one in Košice, cozy settings for families with children, maybe even the return of a federal league - idyllic. Every football fan would be pleased, adding wistfully: if only there were someone worth watching.

The government’s surprise decision on Wednesday to allocate 4.5 million euros annually over ten years to the Slovak Football Association for stadium construction and renovation raised eyebrows, especially during a period of fiscal consolidation. Twenty-one municipalities and football circles celebrated. The rest of the country was left wondering. The critics’ basic question: why sport and not another sector? There are, after all, plenty of priorities.

To those skeptical of physical activity: a recent KPMG study showed that every euro invested in sport generates six euros of public benefit. Despite this, real government spending on sport has declined in recent years. More money for sport can be justified. The tougher questions are different: why should extra millions go specifically to football? Why exclusively to a handful of stadiums?

Any additional sports funding should have been distributed based on publicly known, clear, and measurable criteria, applicable across all sports federations—not handed out due to the lobbying success of a single federation at the ministerial or governmental level. The 45 million for stadiums is a textbook case of government-level lobbying.

National teams, talents, and children

The public interest in sports funding from the state budget lies in supporting national teams, talented youth, and mass participation of children—in school (P.E., school competitions) and after school (e.g., through sports vouchers). We should primarily support physical activity, not concrete. Renovating regional stadiums in provincial or district towns is a regional, not a national priority. It should be funded by the stadium owners, municipalities, or sports clubs that lease them—not taxpayers.

The formula for allocating funding to national teams and youth talent should be: success × social importance—a method publicly proposed by the author of this piece years ago and slightly adapted in the current government's sports policy adopted last December. If extra money is available, it should go into this formula for national teams, youth programs, and children's sports.

A project without competition isn’t cheap

If the state has decided to allocate unexpected millions - neither to teachers nor to national teams, youth coaches, or P.E. teachers to reintroduce a third compulsory weekly gym class - then the government document should at the very least have defined criteria for distributing funds to specific cities. Why Topoľčany and Levice, and not second-division Rimavská Sobota, Šaľa, Liptovský Mikuláš, or Martin?

The only fair solution is a competitive selection process including a competition between locations. The decisive criterion should be the smallest financial demand from the state. If Lučenec can do it for one-third the cost of Dolný Kubín, build it there. According to the president of the Football Association, the submitted system is “correct, efficient, and inexpensive.” But how can it be correct and inexpensive without competition?

Officials in Michalovce, where the municipality built a good stadium with its own money, were understandably perplexed. Why no funding for their stadium’s final upgrades—while Žilina gets money for parking? And what about Trnava, where the city has a contractual agreement with a private investor?

A flawed process

“We’re in!” After announcing a joint Olympic bid for 2022, we’ve once again seen the same flawed approach. The government approved this stadium project just two months after passing a ten-year national sports policy—one that made no mention of stadiums. It happened without public discussion, and even without interdepartmental review. Our sports policies are drafted and filed away, forgotten.

Why are we incapable of tackling any major sports issue in a transparent, organized way? Think back to the opaque process behind building the hockey arena in Bratislava.

The football association’s lobbying was, from their perspective, rational. Given that the current Education Ministry funding model grants football only slightly more than much less popular and less successful sports—with smaller youth bases and no presence in the Interior or Defense Ministries—footballers pushed through their agenda. It was unsystematic, but effective. And when ribbon-cutting ceremonies begin, no one will be asking how the money got there.

Pandora’s box is now open. The hockey federation is surely preparing their own stadium renovation proposal. Other team sports may unite to lobby for multi-purpose halls. We still lack track and field facilities. And what about full-length swimming pools? Just tweak the criteria and make sure Slovak firms get involved.

One more joke to end on. According to the Economy Minister, “the project’s economic benefits will be incalculable - everyone will be healthy and play sports.” Bread and circuses? Thousands of youth coaches and volunteers striving to get kids moving would say: role models aren’t created by pouring concrete.