News and Articles related to Bulgaria
Current date: 2010-02-09 11:02

Eurofootball suspended sponsorship of Bulgarian sports

Eurofootball temporarily suspended sponsorship of football, volleyball and basketball. This is disastrous news for Bulgarian sports.

The sporting bet operator, associated with shady businessman Vassil Bozhkov, will stop investing in these three championships. Instead of attributing the move to the world financial crisis, it seems that Bozhkov and his team calculated the expenses and profits, drew the line and decided it was pointless to waste money.

A month ago another wealthy Bulgarian and sports investor, Grisha Ganchev, stopped giving money for wrestling and motor sports. Over the years many businessmen stopped financing sports for various reasons, of which the most important is the utter fiasco of the government’s policy for developing and improving professional sports.

Over the last 18 years the successive Cabinets did everything they could to drive sponsors away. The absence of willpower, professionalism and objectivity in the process of financing sports on the part of the chief executives of the Bulgarian state youth and sports agency is especially notable. School sports have ceased to exist, university sports teams are a rarity, nobody plays sports in city neighborhoods and the countryside. Not even children’s football training schools exist now, even though they were a dream come true for many kids at the time.

Some state officials saw spending budget money as giving some to certain sports federations and keeping the rest. They ruined the last existing sports facilities and venues, which enthusiasts made every effort to sustain by organizing fundraisers and begging around. This cannot go on.

Even though our politicians love taking photos with famous Bulgarian athletes. It was time to show them that they can’t get money without cooperating conscientiously. You don’t need to be psychic to know that more sponsors will move away from sports in the near future “because of the international economic crisis.” Pity.