The first swimming pools close earlier or close completely. How long until gyms or sports fields close? The clubs are now sounding the alarm in a fire letter: After the pandemic, they could no longer face another crisis on their own.
Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) - In an urgent appeal, hundreds of Baden-Württemberg sports clubs have turned to their state associations and warned of a club dying due to the sharp rise in gas and electricity costs. The situation is more threatening than the consequences of the corona pandemic, according to the letter already sent and published on Thursday to the three presidents of the Baden Sports Association Freiburg and North and the Württemberg State Sports Association. Many clubs have been announced by their energy suppliers, sometimes massive price increases.
"Especially for clubs with their own halls, sports centers or pools, the prospects are more than bleak," writes Harald Link from the Böblingen sports association in the letter signed by 572 sports clubs. "There is a growing fear in our sports clubs that this time we won't just get off lightly."
The local public utilities threatened a club from the greater Stuttgart area with a price increase of almost 800 percent, while another could no longer find an energy company and had to buy electricity on the futures market. However, for social reasons it is not possible to increase the membership fees. In addition, the members would then "run away in droves". It is only a matter of time before a club significantly reduces its operations or closes its sports facilities completely, Link writes on behalf of the clubs.
“We know only too well from the past two difficult Corona years what health and social, what social and personal consequences such a “cold lockdown” would have in organized sport,” writes Link, who is also Vice President of the Swabian Gymnastics Association. Clubs therefore hoped for help from the municipalities, the state and the federal government.
The clubs criticize politics. "As in the Corona crisis, organized sport, the largest non-governmental actor in child and youth work, does not seem to be heard in politics with its major problems," they write. It is deeply disappointing that clubs and associations were not included in the federal government's third relief package.
Just a few days ago, the State Sports Association of Baden-Württemberg (LSVBW) and the three sports federations in Baden-Württemberg warned in a letter to Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) about the “great, sometimes existence-threatening concerns” of the clubs. The sports associations had demanded that the Baden-Württemberg head of government should work at the federal level to find a solution to relieve the sports clubs.
