Public or private, which sector should be providing funds for the development of sports?

There is a debate in Syria today on issues related to the private financing of sports and how the government allowed private money to finance athletics through the so-called ‘private finance initiatives.’ Some of these initiatives proved successful in improving sporting performance. In other cases, however, they have not produced better results.In fact, in some cases they actually had a negative effect, especially when private investors tried to get involved with administrative issues and even interfered with training decisions. In today’s world, football clubs, for example, are being bought and sold like any other commodity. Companies and private individuals actually own many of the world’s most famous teams and clubs. Private ownership has proved to be a highly lucrative business, with big companies and business people competing to buy football clubs at astronomical prices. Despite having to pay record salaries to star players, private investors are reaping the benefits through ticket prices, revenue from advertising and sale of club memberships. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich owns the world famous English club Chelsea and Egyptian billionaire Mohammad al-Fayed is the proud owner of Fulham Club. What one should stop and ask is whether private financing of athletics has yielded better results, or has it denigrated sporting performance by providing sky-high salaries for gifted players at the expense of the public, their supporters? It is correct that sport has become a lucrative business. It results in more money for players and stakeholders. Certainly, clubs must be financed. Someone must pay the salaries, and the kit, medical and administrative expenses but the amounts being spent in this regard today are on the verge of being obscene. Britain’s David Beckham (playing in the United States from this summer) recently signed a deal for £128 million. This does not include personal advertising revenue. How does his club find that kind of money? Would his personal skills be less interesting to watch if he earned less? How can relatively poor countries like Argentina and Brazil still produce top class football players who end up being “sold” for millions of dollars to wealthy clubs, and sometimes, wealthier countries? Many in Syria have started calling for private funding of sports clubs. They see the country’s failure to produce good players and good performances as a direct result of the limited public financing provided by the government. Many want the government to allow private ownership of the Syrian League and the individual clubs within it. They take for granted the idea that more money will automatically mean better performance. Clearly, there is a link between the amounts of money, public or private, that is dedicated to sports and sporting facilities in a country and the athletes it produces. Countries that allow athletes the privilege of training full-time without having to seek additional employment, and spend money on sporting facilities and sports schools and academies are reaping the benefits of this by producing world class athletes who can compete on an international level. So, acknowledging that money must be spent on sport and sporting facilities, the question remains – which sector should be pro-viding these funds? Six years after allowing private funding there has not been any evidence either of a rush by private businesses to really support sports or of a staggering improvement in sporting performance. Whether or not there is a demand among the private sector wealthy businessmen to support sporting clubs is yet to be seen. Although it might be still early to assess the experience of private financing, but we should at least have started to see some results. We do see a few foreign players in some basketball clubs for example and may be better financial returns for some clubs and players. But apart from this, we see more conflicts between the club managements and the sponsors, accusations and short-term measures without any indications of long-term planning for an overall development. This article is not meant to oppose the involvement of private actors in financing and sponsoring sport. It merely tries to say that there are other prerequisites that have to be provided in order to make this experience a success, learning from the experience of other countries that have implemented this before us. Complete dependence on sponsors with-out building clubs’ management capacities on how to develop their own strategies will not benefit clubs. We should not understand professionalism and private financing in sport to only be the ability to buy foreign players or to use players as moving advertising screens. Buying

foreign players cannot be sustainable because, first, they come for a season or two and then leave. Second, the prices of the good players are rising rapidly which means that local small-scale sponsors can-not afford the good players. Therefore, we will end up having only second or third class players. What is needed now is a proper organizational and administrative structure in the clubs’ management that is independent of individual people and/or personalities. There should be a clear structure, good strategy for development with clear objectives and formal procedures for supervision. This also entails that each club develops a budget that is fiscally sound, following accepted accounting procedure, and raises funds in a manner that can be verified with regular reviews by qualified accounting firms. Any sponsorship contribution will then come within what is in the best interests of the clubs and to achieve long- term objectives like having a wide base of young players who are identified early in the club and taken care of in order to feed the clubs with fresh blood and consequently support the national teams. This would make the development of our clubs more sustainable and less vulnerable to controls from owners or sponsors Public financing should not be neglected also because it is still necessary but it must be re-channeled, as private money will go only to the profitable part of sports, such as football and basketball, neglecting other important sports especially individual sports as we see in some former socialist countries. Achieving this would mean that we benefited from the lessons learnt from the experiences of others. As late comers, we should avoid repeating other’s mistakes.