This year the Vasas Sport Club celebrated its 101 years anniversary, and it has handed over a new sports facility, a separate sports hall has been built next to the club’s handball hall at Fáy utca. The two storey building takes up a total area of 2600 sqm, it required an investment of 438 million HUF, 70% of which has been allocated from corporate tax allowance (TAO) revenues.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has inaugurated the building together with Mayor István Tarlós and László Markovits, President of Vasas Sport Club. In his speech the Prime Minister has emphasized: this investment like some other ones shows that the government devotes significant subsidies not only for football. He added that other sports’ turn will also come, raising the example of swimming. Viktor Orbán has laid down that supporting sport is extremely important for the government, even during the economic crisis, as it is essential to prepare for “the post-crisis world” as well.
“For us it is now one of the most important duties to tempt youth back to the sport courts. Only one-third of young people play sports regularly in a country, which stands on the eighth place considering the number of Olympic medals ever won”, stated the Prime Minister, and then commented on sports developments, for which in the 2012/2013 season the government approved a sum of 48 billion HUF.
“We can feel it again that in the last two and a half years something, that should have changed, is now changing. Values. Budapest, the nation’s capital city, beyond its administrative, cultural and touristic role, is considered to be exemplary in sports life, and this is also why today’s occasion is remarkable”, said István Tarlós. The Mayor added that the competitiveness of Hungary and Budapest is not only boosted by market, trade or cultural stakeholders, but also by sports clubs and sportsmen, being not measurable in Hungarian Forint. And Vasas, as one of the largest youth football coaching organisations, is particularly important in the sports life of Budapest.
