Abstract
Hungary has a long successful history in the Summer Olympics, although the performance of its commercialized global team sports has been decreasing radically in the past decades. Despite the strong political and social willingness to field successful professional sports teams, the trend has not changed. This study attempts to describe the effect of governmental subsidization on professional sport’s performance with the aim of understanding why a huge gap has emerged between successful elite sports and the popular but underperforming ‘spectacular’ teamsports (football, basketball, ice-hockey, handball, water polo) in Hungary. It is important to conceptualize this paradox properly in order to better understand the particular mechanisms of decision-making and changes in sport policies. Our research reviews and analyses the role, status and position of the governing bodies of the Hungarian elite sport system since the structural reforms of 2010. A non-financial audit were conducted with the support of the Hungarian Olympic Committee in which the sixteen prioritized national sports federations were analysed, by interviews with leaders of the federations and filling out a questionnaire by experts of the associations.
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