Participation of private capital in Hungarian sport financing system used to be quite poor and that is the reason why the new system of tax benefits for companies that provide additional subsidies for team sports was introduced.

The legislation adopted by the Hungarian Parliament and approved last year by the European Commission allows the subsidy of five team sports (football, waterpolo, basketball, handball and ice hockey), thus involving new financial resources from outside of the state budget. The participation of the corporate investment which was only around 10% earlier, now has been increased considerably. There is a large range of beneficiaries.

In the period 2011/2012, 42 billions HUF of subsidies were paid to more than 1500 different sport development programmes presented by the five national sport federations, sport organisations working in one of these five sports, sport schools, sport foundations as well as the Hungarian Olympic Committee.

In this unique and innovative financing system the use of the resources is subject to a strict double-phase professional and financial control before and after the programmes’ realisation. The controlling and monitoring system set up in the public administration is composed by three levels. The National Sport Institute is the agency responsible for the control and surpervision of the sport development programmes and the renovations or building of the sport facilities financed by the subsidies for team sports based on the applications.

For the financial period 2012/2013 sport development applications are currently being presented. The number of these applications as well as their overall amount is estimated slightly over the figures observed in the period 2011/2012.

(State Secretariat for Sport)