New sports funding law: A partial success for organized sport

DOrganized sport has rejected one of its greatest hopes for the planned sports funding law, but has brought about important changes in its favor in other areas. Accordingly, the heart of the planned law – an agency that will direct the promotion of elite sports in the future – will not be installed under the umbrella of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB). According to SZ information, this emerges from the final draft law, which is to be submitted to the federal cabinet and the parliamentary process next week.

A group from the “sports policy environment in Bavaria,” as DOSB sports director Olaf Tabor recently wrote in an email, had tried in recent weeks to bring the planned top sports agency into the DOSB’s jurisdiction. Christiane Schenderlein (CDU), Minister of State for Sport and Volunteering, had recently intervened publicly: The agency should reorganize top-level sports funding “fundamentally” and largely independently; this could not be achieved under the umbrella of the DOSB as a representative of sports interests. The federal government, which currently distributes around 350 million euros annually from the Chancellery’s budget alone to leading associations, bases and other measures, should also have the final say on how the funds are distributed.

The final draft represents a “blatant step backwards,” criticizes “Athleten Deutschland”

However, the DOSB has secured major successes in the small print: On the one hand, it is to receive three of nine seats on the board of trustees, the highest control body of the top sports agency. In the first draft law, only one of five positions was intended for DOSB. The federal government should still have the majority on the board of trustees with five seats, but the three DOSB representatives will receive central access rights: they, along with a representative from politics, must explicitly agree to the election of the two board members of the future funding agency. And these board members will be responsible for huge parts of the funding in the future – in particular how millions in tax money will be distributed and what requirements will be given to the sports associations.

The independent sports representatives “Athleten Deutschland” sharply criticized the draft in a statement on Wednesday. “Instead of progress, the draft represents a blatant step backwards,” it says: the agency’s steering mandate has been weakened and independence is endangered by greater opportunities for influence through organized sport. The Federal Chancellery and organized sport, which “significantly influenced” the draft, would send a clear signal: “Independent and effective athlete representation is still not desired in the German sports system,” said Pia Greiten, President of Athletes Germany. They were “shocked” and “decisively” rejected the draft.

The essence of this is that the athlete representation should not have a guaranteed seat on the board of trustees, the key supervisory body of the top sports agency. The DOSB could reserve one of its three seats for an athlete representative, but this does not have to come from the group of “Athletes Germany”. The DOSB is certainly not secretly worried about this development either.