PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad & Tobago, CMC – President of the Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee (TTOC), Brian Lewis wants an overhaul in the way national sporting organisations (NSOs) access funding for athlete and sporting development.
Lewis is concerned that NSOs will receive less state funding since government is challenged to provide improved social services includingnational security. This, he said, are among reasons for a new discussion on sourcing funding for sports in Trinidad & Tobago.
Lewis said that the TTOC is considering the reintroduction of a sport marketing forum, first held four years ago.
“I think it is absolutely necessary to help us build capacity and to help take a different approach to the whole question of funding sport. I don’t think that the reliance–and there is significant reliance on Government funds–is a healthy situation,” he said in a recent interview.
“Sport on the whole needs to diversify how it goes about funding and generating funds. As part of the whole sport marketing re-look we have to look at a number of different things,” he said.
“We must be able to go to corporate T&T with a value added approach in terms of how sports can–besides the corporate social responsibility perspective–help corporate T&T meet their bottom line. I think we have to be realistic. Corporate T&T’s focus is their bottom line and there is nothing wrong with that. I don’t understand why people want to make corporate T&T (feel) guilty. Business is about profit and what we have to do within sports is review how we go about it. I genuinely and honestly feel so. We have to try to develop a parallel partnership in the sense of what value does sport bring to
corporate T&T, in addition to corporate social responsibility. How can we assist corporate T&T achieve their objectives?”
