Kaspars Tsiprus Interview: LBS General Secretary on Basketball & Diena

Kaspars Tsipruss became the general secretary of the Latvian Basketball Union in the summer of 2020, but this year he brought the European Championship to Latvia, which definitely became the sports event of the year. It is estimated that the direct impact of this event on the national economy was 82.99 million euros, and the indirect impact was more than 51 million, according to the report on the economic impact of the tournament prepared by Elmar Kehr. In general, it can be said with absolute certainty that the successful course of the championship has enabled not only its organizers to realize their ability, but also to attract similarly high-level events to Latvia in the future.

43-year-old Tsipruss was born in Rezekne, and previously, for many years, he successfully proved himself on the field as a player. Namely, from 1998 to 2015, Tsiprus was a professional basketball player, played in Latvian, Italian, Slovenian, Polish, Spanish, United Arab Emirates, Estonian and Lithuanian clubs. He was also in the Latvian U-18, U-19 and U-20 national teams, played 87 games in the national team from 2000 to 2008, represented Latvia in the 2001, 2005 and 2007 European Championships. Cipros holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and a Basketball Coaching Certificate, and also graduated from the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Europe Education Program in 2018 Time-out.

In recognition of everything accomplished this year, the nomination has also come to zero European person of the year in Latviafor which he competes with such socially respected people as the center Marta conductor Iluta Lāce and choir While… chief conductor Jurgis Cābulis.

Before the European basketball championship, you said that the contribution of the event to Riga will be around 60 million euros. Looking back now, can you say that everything was successful?

Now we see that the total contribution of the event is much higher than 60 million euros. 60 million is only from foreign tourists and participants, but EuroBasket because of this, many basketball fans from all over Latvia also visited Riga. You can always want better, but in my opinion, we fulfilled our pre-tournament predictions.

If you have already been nominated for the title of European Man of the Year, this is a certain assessment and answer to the haters, because there has been a lot of criticism during the organization of the championship. How do you feel about such a positive competition?

I won’t deny, it sure is nice. Many people have carried the name of Latvia in Europe quite loudly this year, and this list could certainly be supplemented with several more who deserve to be on it. Therefore, even participating in this competition is a huge pleasure and honor.

What were the things that, looking at this moment’s experience, you would say: yes, now I would do differently in organizing the championship. What was the most difficult?

I wouldn’t want to say that I would do anything differently in the main trains, because in general, I think everything was done well. The biggest challenges were in various nuances, where we got stuck in some places due to lack of experience. That is why it is so important to hold similar and equally high-level events more often, not only in basketball and not only in sports, because the demands and technologies of the spectators do not stand still. If, for various reasons, we refuse to host this type of event for a while, then I am afraid that with time the gap in understanding and ability from the countries hosting the big events will be so great that nothing like this could ever happen again.

The moment after our loss to the Lithuanians was the most difficult in purely human terms. The next morning, everything was annoying and it felt like the end of the world was coming and the colors had disappeared. (Smiles.) However, you had to get up, keep working, keep smiling and do everything so that this championship remains in your mind only with positive memories.

Did you also analyze what was the arithmetic mean profile of a visitor to the European Championship and how much money did he leave here?

Since both the group tournament and the finals were held here, sports tourists and fans attended the games, and when the teams of certain countries achieved excellent results, the group of supporters was also joined by the highest officials. As FIBA ​​representatives admitted, so many high-level politicians had not visited any final tournament of the European Championship until now, as many came to Riga. Therefore, it is clear that the amplitude of spending was very different.

After research and surveys, the economists we invited concluded that the average daily spending per person was a little over 300 euros.

Then, putting everything together and speaking in business logic, how much money did we spend on holding the championship and how much did we earn from it?

Probably everyone is mainly interested in the public contribution section. The math is as follows: Latvia EuroBasket a little less than 10 million euros was allocated for the event, but around 15.5 million euros returned directly to the state budget through various taxes.

On the other hand, if we talk about the direct economic impact of the event, it is over 80 million euros. If we also calculate the effect of the multiplier, it reached even more than 130 million euros.

What do you think is the contribution of the championship and an event of this level in general to the society?

First of all, it is the promotion of the country’s image. According to our auditor, no event in the last five years provided such national publicity as EuroBasket.

Secondly, such sporting events unite the nation, and a large part of society forgot about internal squabbles, at least for a couple of weeks.

Thirdly, and in my opinion, this is the main contribution – that, despite the catastrophic demographic situation, precisely such events, in which each of our children and young people can almost touch the world’s biggest stars, increase interest not only in the specific sport, but in sports in general, and we have an increase in the number of children in sports schools again.