How could you live so far in a few months?
I know, I know, I know, I know…
For several weeks, the Sports editorial team of Latvian Television (LTV) carefully followed the battles of distribution of money to sports organizations. The first indications that unprecedented fun is expected this year were already heard on the sidelines several months ago. The decision of the Ministry of Education and Science to collect the data submitted by the federations and calculate the state funding on their basis was met with great skepticism – do they really understand the scale and specificity of work they have accumulated for themselves?
State funding is calculated with the help of criteria, taking into account the data sent by the federations about the size, amount of activities, achievements. The procedure is quite complicated, an uninitiated person can easily get lost in it or be deceived, so elsewhere in Europe, the ministries responsible for sports have delegated the verification of data and the calculation of funding either to non-governmental sports organizations or to sports agencies subordinate to the ministries. So to speak, field practitioners using a “logic filter” are quick to spot anomalies in the data submitted by the federation.
Latvian Television studied the practice of Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Sweden in depth. The officials of these countries were very responsive to share their experiences and present their system in detail.
If you want, you can get a full picture of how the process goes elsewhere in two working days, and come to the conclusion that maybe there is no need to invent a new bicycle.
Latvia decided that it is both – and withdrew from the practice that the data submitted by the federations is collected and evaluated by a non-governmental organization (previously it was the Council of Latvian Sports Federations). By charging this work to Ministry of Interior officials, who have lacked staff capacity for proper performance of basic functions for years.
Needless to say, Latvia lags behind the mentioned countries both in the amount of funding and in various indicators of people’s involvement and health. It is also self-explanatory to note that Latvia has still not created a digital platform for centralized submission of federation applications and data entry, while the aforementioned quartet has done it for a long time, so it did not hide the surprise that the process of distributing money to federations in Latvia faces such difficulties and agitation.
“In the opinion of the Ministry, everyone is a thief and a fraud. Starting with the big sports organizations – the Council of Latvian Sports Federations, the Olympic Committee, and the Team Sports Association – the same attitude is towards the federations,” argued the Latvian Curling Associations in one of the LTV stories board member Artis Zentelis.
It cannot be denied that sports organizations themselves have done much to earn such doubts. The first months of the year have shown that the attitude is not unfounded, as there were excesses in the data presented by the federations with a number circled in red.
“There are such completely absurd numbers. When you look and wonder where this number of children and young people can suddenly double and triple. Competitions are suddenly held ten times more,” stressed Zentelis. Meanwhile, the president of the Latvian Swimming Federation, Aivars Platonovs, explained why the growth indicators skyrocketed, actually making Latvia the fastest growing (with irony…) sports nation in the world. “Actually, we produce events because of the quantity, or because of these criteria, to get the money,” admitted Platonov.
There are many glaring examples in the mass and activity numbers presented by the federations and accepted by the ministry this year – we highlighted some of them in a series of stories, so I will not mention them again. One example – even when the ministry has taken the final decision on the allocation of funding with the third approach,
it can still be seen that the figures published on the websites of more than 10 federations do not match those approved by the ministry, and thus used in the calculation of funding.
Who snooped, who didn’t check and who will be punished for it – the Administrative Court could provide the answers to these questions, if the enthusiasm of individual federations to drive the ministry to sit on a wooden bench does not fade. We also asked what Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (“New Unity”) has to say about all this. There were no direct answers, but indirectly it could be understood that she does not plan to take radical steps and that the disbursement of funding will not be stopped.
Throw everything in one “Excel” table
Let’s assume that the Ministry of Education and Culture will draw conclusions and next year they will either entrust the verification of the data submitted by the federations and the calculation of state funding to someone else, or they will have turned a blind eye and created additional resources to do it more skillfully. This does not remove the question of whether the existing funding model is even rational. Namely, is it possible to put all 95 recognized sports federations on one ruler and distribute their funding? How can you compare, for example, bobsleigh, checkers and football with the help of an Excel table?
In my mind, the answer is quick and concise – you can’t. Each of the mentioned has its advantages, after which we can place the word “but”. Bobsleigh has Olympic medals, but no mass and significant global competition. Checkers is very inclusive, as it can be played equally well by both sexes and until old age, but the contribution to the prevention of diseases will be less from it than from more physically active sports. Football is the most popular sport in Latvia (and the world), but it has been played in our country for 20 years without success. At the same time –
comparing the places won by bobsleigh and soccer teams on a global scale, ignoring the size of the competition or the context in general, and then dividing the state funding, is the same as comparing drones with passenger planes and determining which flies better.
And calculate how much money each should be given for it. (By the way, model flying is also an officially recognized sport in Latvia, which is evaluated in one “Excel” table together with bobsleigh, checkers, football and others.)
The practice of other countries studied by LTV shows that we are not unique in our dilemma. Other near and distant neighboring countries also take care of criteria, calculation points and share money for sports games, winter and summer individual sports. Also put all in one “Excel” table. With a caveat – the criteria elsewhere are much narrower and more specifically targeted than in Latvia. The unifying element is massiveness.
In recent months, LTV Sport’s editorial team has interviewed sports officials and university teaching staff or researchers not only from Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, but also from Slovenia, the Netherlands, even Luxembourg and Albania.
Go in whichever direction you want, the basic principle is the same everywhere – mass, mass and again MASS.
“At the moment, it seems that elite sport needs to justify its existence more than popular sport. Although we [Somijā] there’s a pretty good history of elite sports behind it,” explained Kati Lehtonen, lead researcher at Jiveski University of Applied Sciences and a former Finnish cross-country skier.
If I emphasized above that the Ministry of Education and Culture has started to move in the opposite direction in the mechanism of calculating money distribution than the rest of Europe, then at least mass participation in youth and popular sports in 2024 was evaluated with a higher coefficient than in other years. So, there are still areas where we try to follow the practice of other European countries. Which is wise because
the pursuit of medals at any cost in today’s world is more suitable for Russia, China and other related countries,
which may or may not be considered the healthiest example.
Is achievement even a criterion?
It seems that a deeper look at the example of Finland would solve many dilemmas in Latvian sports as well. Finns have divided all 74 recognized sports into three baskets – large, small, medium. The division is made by measuring the mass of each sport in Finland and also the financial circulation of each federation. “If a federation is close to bankruptcy, then we as a state must not give money to such federations. That’s why we need information about the financial situation of the federations to make sure that they function properly,” explained Kari Niemi Nikkola, Finnish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, in an interview with LTV senior advisor.
Major sports in Finland share 46% of the funding allocated to the federations, medium sports – 30%, and small sports – 24%. “People’s participation is the only criterion that is actually important for the country. Our only interest as a Finnish country is to involve more people in sports – the more active people, the more useful and targeted the federation is for the whole nation,” Nikkola defines the national sports policy.
In Finland, there are 20 less state-funded sports than in Latvia, because there is a higher threshold of requirements for applying for state funding.
In addition, the Finns are going to raise it in the near future by tripling the minimum size requirements – only those sports with at least 3,000 active participants could receive funding. Which will most likely lead to the fact that a whole bunch of less commonly practiced sports will be unhooked from the state bean. Cruel? Maybe. But at least the national sports policy is clearly defined. A moving nation, not medals. “Eurobarometer” data shows that Finland is the most athletically active country in Europe with 71% of the population exercising at least once a week.
It is significant that in Finland, as in Latvia, elite-level athletes have their own support mechanism. Just as in the Latvian Olympic team, athletes are divided into gold, silver and bronze, and each of them has its own funding – the same three-level graduation practice is also practiced in Finland. Even the number of athletes individually financed by the state is very similar. Just a note – Latvian athletes in the Olympic team receive twice as much funding as Finnish athletes…
In addition, in Finland, an income threshold has been set (80,000 euros per year), beyond which an athlete cannot apply for state funding.
Weeding out those who earn well in competitions and are able to attract sponsors. Is it the right move? Debatable.
Financing elite-level athletes in Latvia and practice in Europe will be the next big “What needs to change in Latvian sports?” topic of the rubric, to which we will devote several stories. It seems that Latvia is also slowly ripe for a change of accent and thinking. The general secretary of the Latvian Olympic Committee, Kārlis Lejnieks, said in a discussion in the sports media MVP that, in his opinion, the achievements box should be removed from the criteria for calculating state funding for federations. Lejnieks did not think that elite-level athletes should not be financed, but that it should be done separately.
The mass and the number of competitions should not be on the same ruler as the medals won.
There are also opposite opinions. Several prominent athletes and sports officials have publicly expressed the opinion that the state should not support athletes who have reached the age of majority at all. There are also supporters of a more moderate position, who recommend setting an age limit – for example, 23 years. Later, you either earn from sports yourself or look for a profession. We will gather opinions and ideas in the coming weeks “What should be changed in Latvian sport?” within the rubric.
To whom to give, why to give, how much to give and what will be the benefit to society? The eternal questions to which there are no clear answers. However, one thing is clear – decisions are made by people, not an “Excel” table, and certainly not one where the responsible ministry throws the data away without even checking it…
2024-03-26 14:26:03
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