Golden age beckons

Philippine sports scored its biggest win a few weeks after the Paris Olympics. No, it wasn’t from pole vault or weightlifting. It was not even in gymnastics, where Carlos Yulo pocketed two gold medals in the recent Summer Games.

The victory was achieved in the Supreme Court after it ordered the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to remit to the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) its full share of revenues mandated by law.

Funding has always been a problem of Philippine sports.

In fact, when the PSC was established in 1990 through Republic Act 6847, it was designed to draw its main funding — the National Sports Development Fund (NSDF) — from various government-owned and -controlled corporations like PAGCOR and PCSO.

Under the law, PAGCOR is to remit five percent of its gross revenue while PCSO will dole out 30 percent from the proceeds of six sweepstakes or lottery draws per year to the NSDF — the war chest that finances the allowances, nutrition, training and participation of national athletes in major international competitions.

But it didn’t happen.

From five percent, PAGCOR slashed its remittance to just 2.14 percent, while the PCSO failed to remit the 30 percent from its charity fund as well.

PAGCOR insisted the PSC’s full share was subject to various deductions — the five-percent franchise tax, the 50-percent share of the national government, and the 10-percent subsidy to the National Power Corporation.

PCSO also argued that PSC’s share came from sweepstakes draws — not lotto games.

Now, with funding coming in trickles and the membership of the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) growing to more than 50 national sports federations comprising a whopping total of 1,606 athletes and 363 coaches, the PSC payroll had gotten bigger while the financial pie that was being shared had gotten much smaller.

And this led to the deterioration of Philippine sports.

Since Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco won a silver medal in the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, no Filipino athlete had won a single medal in the next four editions of the Summer Games — in Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004, Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012.

At one point around 10 years ago, the PSC had an annual NSDF of only P800 million, which was way below the P8-billion budget of tiny Singapore.

Things, however, somehow changed when the private sector, especially the MVP Sports Foundation of industrialist Manny Pangilinan, started to take an active role, lending a helping hand to sports where the country had good chances of winning like boxing, badminton, golf, rowing, taekwondo, gymnastics, weightlifting, and even the fan favorite, basketball.

This yielded very encouraging results as weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz captured the country’s first Olympic gold medal, while boxers Nesthy Petecio, Carlo Paalam and Eumir Marcial emerged with podium finishes in the Tokyo Summer Games.

Three years later, it was gymnast Carlos Yulo’s turn to win in the Olympics as he took home two gold medals while Petecio and another boxer in Aira Villegas claimed bronze medals.

For the record, Diaz’s federation — the Samahang Weightlifting ng Pilipinas — is drawing its private funds from MVPSF, which also sponsored the construction of the gym where Yulo trains whenever he’s in Manila.

In short, if there was no support from the private sector and our athletes only banked on their meager allowance from the government, no Hidilyn Diaz or Carlos Yulo would emerge to inspire this sports-loving nation.

That’s why the Supreme Court ruling ordering PAGCOR and the PCSO to remit the full amount mandated by law