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Better budgeting needed for sports

Carole Beckford, Hospitality Jamaica Writer

The commercial evolution of sports and how it has managed to move from the kitchen table model to the corporate boardroom model has become quite a sophisticated industry from a financial viewpoint.

Benchmarks have been adopted from the United States and European professional sporting leagues which are seen as the most important leagues in the world and certainly the most lucrative for athletes.

What of budgeting and sports though? How can organisations, clubs and countries ensure that the proper budgets are allocated for sports and its development to drive the kind of activity that is so necessary in a society?

Internationally, there are funding sources and those have to be explored at all costs; also people who are in charge must and should have the basic principles and practice of effective financial management.

These managers should also be introduced to basic accounting principles and practice, and then led into more complex issues of pricing, costing, financial analysis, budgeting, and financial projections. While, at the very senior level, managers and administrators should explore future developments in sport finance and funding and examine how they will impact on sport management knowledge and skill requirements.

It is within this framework that Jamaica's policy supporting growth and development in the sports sector should be based, and efforts must facilitate and set rules to regulate organisations which manage sports to effectively manage the sector.

It is important that people who are likely to be involved in sports administration understand some basic principles, including:

The commercial evolution of sports over the last 50 years or so

The different commercial phases sports goes through to reach commercial maturity

The major global sports events and leagues, and their financial arrangements

The financial strengths and weaknesses of contemporary sports.

Role of a nation

Jamaica, a country with rich sports history, must ensure that there is an awareness programme for the continuity of the legacy.

"The positive influence of sports on all aspects of human life - including its benefits for health, socialisation, self-confidence, leadership skills, and mutual understanding across divisions of race, culture and gender - means that its importance should never be ignored in any peace-building and reconciliation initiatives," according to Elvis Ndubuisi Iruh and Marc Broere. Iruh is an African author and Broere is a Nigerian journalist.

Sports' role in nation building is vital and the combination is equally important to development for the obvious reasons. It is an outlet for the energies of young people, it facilitates the development of individual character and teamwork, it gives enjoyment to people who in many cases have few facilities for recreation.

If all these assertions and assumptions are true, then why has it become so difficult for sports to get the right budgets? If it is true that sports help build bridges between nations and to unite people ... show me the money!

Please provide feedback to cubeckford@gmail.com