Historic Sport Satellite Account report launched in forgettable fashion, big screens continue to get attention

You and I know that national men’s football team coach Kim Pan-gon will not launch Malaysia to the Fifa World Cup anytime soon.

We also know that while Kim is in a peculiar position, he won’t complain or drown himself in self-pity. Neither is he expected to retaliate if the FA of Malaysia (FAM) eventually blames him for the team’s failure.

How can Kim blame an entity that has not helped improve the standards of the sport for decades?

A decade ago, the Youth and Sports Ministry felt it had to step in and help correct the declining football, believing this country desperately needed a “proper” grassroots development programme. That saw the birth of the National Football Development Programme (NFDP), led by the ministry.

Ministers who later occupied Menara KBS continued with the programme, with one of them feeling that it needed more juice and had invested much attention and funds into it.

And the ministry continues to be attracted to football, evident with its “big screen” initiative. The latest saw 16 big screens placed nationwide for a World Cup qualifier match between Kyrgyzstan and Harimau Malaya yesterday. The match ended 1-1.

The Youth and Sports Ministry should leave the sport to FAM. I’m getting bored with this endless intervention from the ministry, thinking they know best.

It is depressing. Despite everything the ministry has done all these years and the mindless amount of taxpayers’ money spent, football fans in Malaysia remain in despair.

Last Friday, Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh launched the preliminary report of the 2022 Sport Satellite Account, an initiative by the ministry through the Sport Industry Secretariat and with the cooperation of the Department of Statistics Malaysia.

The public engagement was sad, and the communication was poor. No one knew that the ministry was working on something Yeoh called “a game changer”.

And the ones who did were undoubtedly hoping that the launch would have been extraordinary. But no.

The Sport Satellite Account would have to be one of the most compelling developments in Malaysian sports, alongside the Sports Development Act 1997.

One can argue, of course, that the NFDP is equally crucial. But I would then say that you’re rather shallow to think that every Malaysian should be on a field kicking a ball.

Initial reports from the account revealed that the gross added value for the sports industry grew by 12.1 per cent in 2022, totalling RM19.6 billion or 1.34 per cent of the nation’s GDP in 2022.

In other words, without the satellite account, the RM19.6 billion would not be computed, and the sports industry would be presumed to be a trivial and pointless contributor to Malaysia’s economy.

At this point, you may already think that we’ve finally got the “true” and fair value of sports to the country. No, we have not. There are also social returns or gains derived from sports.

These social gains have economic implications, and with the development of the Sports Satellite Account, we can also apply the Social Accounting Matrix to decipher those social gains and compute them as economic returns.

And there is more. But at this stage, it is important for us, especially those working in delivering public services and developing policies, to understand the actual value and potential of the Sport Satellite Account.

It is difficult for me to find comfort that a historical development had a meaningless and forgettable beginning.

The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of Twentytwo13.

The post Historic Sport Satellite Account report launched in forgettable fashion, big screens continue to get attention appeared first on Twentytwo13.