Monday, September 20, 2021
Analysis creates anger in sports
The “nonsense” should be financially significant
The Ministry of the Interior has German sport analyzed in order to optimize funding. The first results are causing a stir – especially where the investigation finds little good. But the influence of the dissatisfied is great and could thus lead to the analysis in vain.
The Zoff was programmed – after all, it’s about money. No sooner were the results of the potential analysis, PotAS for short, which is decisive for future sports funding, on the table than Ingo Weiss hit the roof. “PotAS is nonsense, a bureaucracy monster,” said the President of the German Basketball Federation to the sports information service.
Weiss had his reasons: the men’s team surprisingly made it to the Olympic quarter-finals in Tokyo and thus crowned a successful summer from DBB’s point of view. Nevertheless, the basketball players ended up in last place in the evaluation of the 26 summer sports by the responsible commission. About this, Weiss rumbled, he was “not at all surprised, because I consider this PotAS analysis to be insolent”.
The PotAS commission, established in 2017, assessed the associations and the individual disciplines based on the core parameters of structure, team potential / performance development and, last but not least, based on the latest successes – before and in Tokyo. The results should be determined as objectively as possible in order to set guidelines for future funding – a balancing act that has obviously failed.
“The spread will increase”
The German Athletics Association secured the top spot with a PotAS value of 80.73 – although most of the DLV athletes in Tokyo had nothing to do with the medals. Behind them are the German Table Tennis Association (80.40) and the German Equestrian Association (79.40). For the basketball players (46.94) it was only enough for the red lantern, well behind the German Fencing Federation (DFeB / 54.37) in the penultimate place.
The figures presented today are now to be translated into funding. Tomorrow, Tuesday, the funding commission will meet with members of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the German Olympic Sports Confederation. The basis for your decisions is a calculation formula with two pillars. Two thirds of the funding should be distributed strictly according to the results of the analysis, the rest is based on the potential, also with a view to the 2024 Games in Paris.
“The spread will increase,” said BMI State Secretary Markus Kerber: “Some are more likely to gain and others will lose.” The respective funding target should be multiplied by the PotAS value of the respective discipline.
The new system threatens to fail quickly
DOSB board member Dirk Schimmelpfennig described the results of the analysis as a “very valuable result” and sees PotAS as an “important step in the implementation of the competitive sports reform”. Of course, those who were behind in the ranking saw it differently.
According to DBB President Weiss, PotAS is “something for individual athletes”, not for teams. Sven Ressel, sports director of the unsuccessful fencers in Tokyo, was also amazed. According to Ressel, the fencers know “where we are currently doing sport”. And yet: “That we are in penultimate position, we certainly would not have expected in this form.”
In the meantime, however, Weiss was not worried about possible losses. “I firmly believe that we will not lose any financial resources,” he said. He continues “firmly on the assumption that both the DOSB and the BMI see how basketball is structured and what it does.” If Weiss, after all spokesman for the influential top sports associations, were to be right, the question of the meaning of the years of analysis would inevitably arise.