The invitation to tender launched last month calls for a study to look into public and private sources of all sports funding and into financial streams within particular sports. It will also consider direct and indirect financial flows between professional and grassroots sports clubs via solidarity mechanisms.
The contractor is expected to study a range of internal market policies that have direct impact on the way sport is funded across the EU and address possible cross-border obstacles.
The European Commission is particularly interested in finding out how the free movement of services in the field of cross-border sponsorship, media or gambling services "might dominate, undermine or crowd out" financing of grassroots sports and disciplines, which rely the most on public support.
The study, announced in the Commission's July 2007 White Paper on Sport, will also analyse different national regulatory aspects that could give rise to internal-market barriers. It should be finalised by the end of 2010.
The EU study follows a macroeconomic report on the public and private financing of sport commissioned by the French Ministry for Sport and published last year.
The study, conducted among EU-27 sport ministries, showed that the main source of sport financing is household spending, which represents nearly half (49.7%) of the total, followed by contributions from local authorities (24.3%), states (11.9%) and private companies (14.1%).
However, significant differences between countries exist. For example, total finance dedicated to sport ranges from €8 per inhabitant in Bulgaria to more than €500 in the Netherlands.
The study outlined a number of recommendations for securing and increasing sports funding. Among these are allocating a bigger share of household financing to the sports movement by earmarking a part of the VAT collected on sports goods and services, including specialist press, TV channels and the Internet, to the voluntary sports movement.
Alternatively, an additional tax on sports products and services may be considered, along the lines of "green taxes".
