Audit office questions €18.5 million in sports sponsorship

Upper Austria’s state audit office has called for tighter rules, greater transparency and savings in sports funding and sponsorship, ORF reported Tuesday. Its review focused on grants, sponsorship deals and premium tickets, including those connected to LASK.

The audit office examined state sports grants and sponsorship by state-owned companies from December 2025 to June 2026. It said the rules for awarding grants were too vague and gave decision-makers wide discretion. It recommended binding criteria and measurable targets in the state’s new “Upper Austria 2032plus” sports strategy.

State-owned companies spent a total of €18.5 million on sports sponsorship from 2023 to 2025, according to the report. LASK received the largest amount, €3.6 million, followed by the “Energie AG Sport Family” with €1.5 million.

The audit office also criticised companies’ purchases of business-club tickets and box seats for football and ice hockey matches. Some tickets were given to employees, while others went unused. The state’s communications and media department, for example, had two premium tickets for the LASK Arena that were unused in the 2023/24 and 2024/25 seasons. A raffle in the state magazine “Unser Oberösterreich” had been planned.

Members of the Upper Austrian state government also had premium season tickets. The audit office said additional tickets had been bought even though some existing ones were unused. It found that Energie AG Oberösterreich and Oberösterreichische Landesbank, known as Hypo OÖ, had not kept adequate records of ticket use. It called for stricter compliance rules and better documentation.

The report also questioned state funding for sporting events. Annual support for the Upper Austrian Ladies tennis tournament rose to €465,000 in 2024, it said. With the federal government withdrawing as a funding source in 2026, the audit office warned that state contributions could rise further.

It also found that support for women’s World Cup ski-jumping events and the men’s summer Grand Prix in Hinzenbach, in Eferding district, had increased significantly. The office recommended reassessing the benefits and scale of the grants.

In youth and elite sport, 71 percent of grant recipients received no more than €1,000, accounting for just four percent of total funding, the report said. The audit office argued that administering many small grants involved too much work.

State Councillor for Sport Markus Achleitner of the Austrian People’s Party defended the funding, saying small clubs depended on accessible grants and that sponsorship was an important marketing tool. The state sports directorate also pointed to the economic and tourism benefits of major events and said it wanted to attract international flagship projects to Upper Austria.

The audit office recommended that the state parliament’s audit committee conduct follow-up reviews of sponsorship and hospitality packages and implement possible savings. Green Party parliamentary leader Severin Mayr criticised the purchase of expensive VIP tickets while many clubs operated on small budgets. MFG parliamentary leader Manuel Krautgartner called for clear rules on public funding but opposed ending small grants, warning that bureaucracy could overwhelm volunteer-run clubs.