Sport Clubs and Economic Aspects of their Relations with Municipalities and Sport Federations

There is a running discussion about the system of financing sport from public budgets and there are opinions that sport is not sufficiently supported. We know surprisingly little about the situation of sport clubs and to find a better support system we have to gather information about the environment of sport clubs. What do we know about relations of sport clubs with public authorities and their own sport union/federation and why do we need to know? The aim of this paper is to analyze relationships between sport clubs and municipalities/sport federations and discuss economic consequences of these relations for the efficiency of public resources allocation. These relationships are important for the evaluation of the system of sport support. Both public authorities and sport unions are partners for sport clubs in the area of financial and non-financial support. We gathered data from sport clubs and performed an analysis especially for three selected sport branches (athletics, basketball, karate). We discovered a significant "failure" in the relationship between sport clubs and their own sport federations. We conclude that before increasing or changing public grants system the "self-organization" of sport clubs in sport unions/federations should be improved, especially in some sport branches.