Sports facilities with floodlights in particular, but also swimming pools, indoor tennis courts, ice rinks or ice skating rinks are at serious risk in maintaining operations. Helmenstein’s examples include a current inflation-related total cost burden of 545 million euros, additional energy costs of 71 million euros to be expected and higher personnel costs of between 65.2 million euros and 131.5 million euros annually following the wage rounds.
In practice, sports clubs and sports facility operators are threatened with “inflation lockdowns” because it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep operations running cost-effectively. “As a result, the performance level of organized sport in Austria cannot be maintained without additional public support to cushion the burden of inflation,” says Helmenstein regarding the consequences in practice. That’s why it’s also clear for Sport Austria President Hans Niessl: “The SportsEconAustria figures show that the situation is dramatic. Organized sport is therefore calling on the federal government to take countermeasures by introducing an energy price brake – also for non-profit sport – and, as already signaled, the increase in special federal sports funding (note: currently around 80 million euros), which has been overdue for around a decade ) will actually be implemented in the fall.”
The physical and mental health of the population as well as jobs are related to sport. “Sport is not an end in itself, but a health and economic motor.” In addition, non-profit associations are not allowed to build up any surplus reserves that go beyond a minimum. At the same time, according to figures from SportsEconAustria, the public sector is already reaping inflation-related additional income from sport in the narrower sense, which, including further increases in energy and labor costs, will total 202 million euros in 2023. Niessl: “Looked at in this way, Austria’s sport would pay for its aid package itself.
Be that as it may, the support must be swift. The inflation crisis threatens to overshadow the corona crisis economically. It’s not just me saying that as a representative of Austrian sport, but also representatives of the Chamber of Labour, the ÖGB, the Federation of Industry and the Association of Hoteliers see it very similarly.
An avalanche of inflation is rolling towards us, destroying prosperity. We must at least cushion them.” This not only requires a rapid increase in the special federal sports funding, but also “the energy price brake, in which 80% of the price as a year ago and 20% according to the current prices should be charged. When the market stops working, the state has to intervene. If he doesn’t, structures collapse. In sport too, of course,” concluded the former governor of Burgenland.