The sports ministers have initiated the elite sports reform for more success and less bureaucracy. Planned cuts at two facilities are probably off the table.
The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) celebrates the detailed concept for the radical restructuring of the competitive sports system as an “important milestone”. Sports should be more flexible, more digital, more innovative and less bureaucratic in the future. For Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser, this is a “big step towards making German top-class sport fit for the future”. The Conference of Sports Ministers (SMK) presented the reform on Friday (September 15, 2023) in Herzogenaurach.
Building an independent sports agency
The core of the reform, which was developed under the leadership of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the states and the DOSB, is the establishment and operation of a sports agency in which the control and promotion of top-class sport is bundled. The agency should be fully operational by the end of 2025 and will be financed with new funds from the federal budget. As a further step, it should also take over the recognition process for the federal bases.
In addition, a federal sports funding law should ensure continuous and fixed funding. “We agree with the BMI that we have a legal right to funding. And we also want to fix the amount of funding as much as possible,” said DOSB board chairman Torsten Burmester. “The law enables consistency, planning security and more flexibility.”
But no cuts to FES and IAT
Faeser announced that the federal government is reversing the planned cut in sports funding for 2024 by 27 million euros. “I am very confident that we can prevent this,” said the SPD minister. It is particularly important not to make cuts to the Institute for Research and Development for Sports Equipment (FES) and the Institute for Applied Training Sciences (IAT), as planned, because “these are particularly funding for participation in the Olympic Games next year”.
This will be done well with “reallocations and the use of leftovers from last year,” said Faeser. She did not specify where less should be invested in reallocations.
Joachim Hermann (CSU), currently chairman of the SMK, also warned: “It’s not just a question of money. It also depends on the associations’ concepts.” Hesse’s Sports Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) sees it similarly: “Money alone doesn’t bring medals, neither does transparency and reducing bureaucracy.”
Declining development
The successes and medal wins on the international sports stage and especially at the Olympic Games have been declining for decades – and things will not improve again any time soon. “Because results and findings won’t be there the day after next,” emphasized DOSB competitive sports director Olaf Tabor. The initial aim is to halt the “more than 20-year downward trend” and reverse the downward trend. This would require a few Olympic periods.
First of all, it’s about improving the sports system. “The Sports Promotion Act creates planning and reliability. The independent sports agency brings together the control and promotion of top-class sport,” explained Burmester. Associations should be able to use budgets more flexibly in order to be able to react more quickly to changes in world sport. “They should go from being a tanker to being a speedboat.”
Sports agency should be ready to start in two years
In just over two years, the sports agency should be able to carry out its work completely independently before the funding is awarded until the federal bases are recognized. Then the achievement of the goals – third place at the Winter Games and fifth place at the Summer Games – should gain momentum.
Words of praise came from the German Athletes Association. “This spirit of optimism gives us hope that the first steps will now be taken for comprehensive and far-reaching reforms in the top-class sports system,” it said in a statement. “Their success will depend largely on rapid and effective implementation.”
