Following the triumph of Jean Pierre Brol and Adriana Ruano at the Paris Olympic Games, the question is once again being discussed: why is there not more investment in individual sports so that more athletes can achieve international success?
The answer is not simple. According to economist Hugo Maúl, there are many factors that must be considered before deciding on the idea of giving more money to the federations and, consequently, having more Olympic athletes.
The first thing Maúl explains is the current federation model that controls professional sports in Guatemala. He recognizes that investment in sports is a challenge, and even more so, changing a model that dates back 40 years and was created based on a public institution financed with resources that the constitution requires.
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The economics expert reflects on a new model where the athlete would have a more direct relationship with the sponsors’ resources, since the current model of public financing for sport spends a lot of resources on the federations, but a large part of that money goes into bureaucracy and “the problem is that everything that is built in terms of administrative structure will require resources and they do not necessarily serve the athlete.”
“The problem is that federations act as intermediaries. and that is something that when one looks at the sports law, necessarily because of the way in which the practice of Olympic federal sport is organized, the athlete by himself does not have all the tools to approach the sponsor directly, but rather has to do so through the bureaucratic structure that was created for that,” explains Maúl.
In the practice of Olympic federal sport, the athlete himself does not have all the tools to approach the sponsor directly, but has to go through the bureaucratic structure that was created for that purpose.
Maúl makes it clear that “as the sports law stands today and with the way federated and Olympic sports are organised, it would be quite difficult for this to materialise without the federations as intermediaries.”
The economist acknowledges that changing the model is not easy and will not happen soon; Nor will it be possible to increase more resources to finance sport in a country where there are other priorities and the financing system is not direct, a problem that is replicated in other State institutions.
“There is a fairly large bureaucracy to comply with all that is public management and the same thing happens to them as in the Ministry of Health, in the Ministry of Education, that in order for a thousand quetzales to reach the beneficiary, you need to spend a considerable amount on operations,” he adds.
Regarding giving more public money to sport, Maúl does not see it as possible. “It is paradoxical in a country like ours that has problems with justice that sport receives more money than the constitutional allocation to justice,” he questions.
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The economist proposes using money better by changing the model and opening up private financing mechanisms that directly reach the athlete in proportion to the results they achieve.
“The problem is that there are a multiplicity of federations and not necessarily a mechanism to know where to prioritize resources, how to improvise resources, and that is a question of sports technique, sports planning, but it cannot be that everything is the same because there are sports that do not need government support,” says Maúl.
The economist points out that “this is a political problem” and there is little interest in resolving it; furthermore, “it would be a battle that is not worth fighting at this time, given all the problems the country has.”
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