Repealing Sports Act is long overdue

What you need to know:

  • The issue: Sports
  • Our view: The government should not only be remembered for hosting gold medal winners returning from Olympics to a dinner, they should be remembered for policies that build the game.

The Federation of Uganda Football Association (Fufa) last week cancelled local leagues that have been on ice because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In ending the season prematurely, Fufa appeared to have lost patience with government that has hardly paid any attention to the sports sector.

Sports can wait, President Museveni said on May 11 during his national address on Covid-19. This was after he categorised sports along with “concerts and discos and so on.”

Although he was right in prohibiting many people from coming together in the name of sports, the sector has not received the attention it deserves even when there are flashes of greatness in athletics, football, etc.
Regrettably, the government inactivity, tied to the National Council of Sports Act, 1964, thrives in an era where the best paid personalities in the world are athletes, and the highest individual taxpayers, too.

The immense potentials of sports is something governments world over are investing in. The returns never let them down. Since the coronavirus took to galloping around the world, governments confronting the pandemic have placed sports at the forefront of their messages.

This is not because the Germans, British, Spanish and Italians are more into leisure than Ugandans. No. It is because they know exactly how much sports brings into the economy, they know how much the economy loses when there are no endorsements and sponsors monies or if those big stars take paycuts.

Take English Premier League, for instance. The world’s most commercialised league has many players earning more than $180,000 (about Shs670b) a year. The total annual wage bill of these players stands at $1.9b. According to the 2019 Global Sports Salary Survey, at 45 per cent income tax, they pay $876b (Shs3.3 trillion).

Basically, mere sportsmen who can wait, pay an equivalent of 1.7 per cent of Uganda’s Proposed National Budget for 2020/2021 to the British government from their salaries alone.

The question is, when do we start planning to get there? It must start somewhere. It must start with ending that leisure tag on sports sector and recognising its value. The government should not only be remembered for hosting gold medal winners returning from Olympics to a dinner, they should be remembered for policies that build the game.

Redefining sports in the laws of the land is long overdue. The Sports and Physical Activity Bill should be tabled as promised years ago. Yes, sports is waiting but it cannot wait for too long.

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