Public-private partnership as a source of financing of sport and recreation infrastructure in Poland

Abstract

Regular physical activity has many beneficial effects on both physical and mental health. In Poland,local government units are obliged to create conditions which promote sport development. Local authorities have to fulfil many different public tasks and at the same time limited sources of financing, so it is worth analysing public-private partnership (PPP) as an alternative form of performing public tasks connected with sport, physical culture and tourism. The main aim of this paper is to assess the significance of PPP as a source of financing of sport and recreation infrastructure in Poland. The methods of literature studies as well as law regulation and the statistical analysis of the data regarding PPP market in Poland have been used.The data was obtained from the Polish Official Public-Private Partnership Platform coordinated by the Ministry of Development Funds and Regional Policy. The analysis covers the period from 2009 to 2020.The results of the study show that PPP contracts in the field of sport and recreation have a significant share in Polish PPP market, although their value and the number of concluded contracts vary from year to year.All analysed contacts were carried out by local authorities from eight voivodeships and the largest number of PPP contracts was concluded in one voivodeship. It may be pointed out that generally Polish local government units are interested in PPP contracts, but it is not a common solution used both in constructing new sport and recreation infrastructure and in managing the existing one. A comparison ofa largenumber and value of announcements (not reflected in concluded PPP contracts)witha muchsmaller number and value of concluded contracts may indicate that there are still some barriers to using PPP contracts in Poland. The conducted assessment of PPP contracts in sport and recreation may be the basis for further research in this field.