Sport inside
Germany’s basketball men are world champions, but the PotAS potential analysis puts the sport in last place. There is a lot of discussion about this – and not always objectively. An overview.
Some time ago, when Germany’s basketball men had just become world champions for the first time, the President of the German Basketball Federation (DBB) spoke out. Ingo Weiss was upset, of course he wasn’t concerned with the basketball players’ performance at the World Cup. He was annoyed about the distribution of funding in top-class sport.
“For me it’s an absurdity that we have PotAS. An institution that certifies that German basketball has no potential.”said Weiss to the German Press Agency. He referred to the World Cup title, bronze at the men’s European Championships, successes among women and young talent. He then suggested that he stop investing money in PotAS and instead invest in athletics.
PotAS report: Last place for basketball
The potential analysis system PotAS is part of the elite sports reform in Germany. It is intended to identify the sports that have the best chance of winning medals at European and World Championships, but especially at the Olympic Games. The evaluation is based on three pillars: potential of a sport, structures in the association, successes before and at the Olympics. The amount of funding that sports receive from the federal government depends largely on their performance at PotAS.
In the current PotAS report for the years 2019-2021, basketball came in last place, while first place went to athletics. So much for theory. In practice, the results looked different: While the basketball men just made history, German athletics remained without a medal at the World Championships in London.
It was this discrepancy that DBB President Weiss was outraged about in the days after winning the World Cup final. His anger was not new; he had already criticized the results of the PotAS report after it was published in October 2021. And he was not alone with his criticism. Olympic discus champion Robert Harting called for PotAS to end. Andreas Michelmann, the President of the German Handball Federation (DHB), compared the system with one on Deutschlandfunk “Look into the crystal ball.”
When the basketball association writes an email
“You will never be able to predict sporting success with absolute certainty, you can only approximate an optimum.”says Urs Granacher, Professor of Training Science at the University of Freiburg and Chairman of the PotAS Commission founded in 2017, in an interview with Sport inside. Of course, there is a discrepancy between the sporting performance of basketball and athletics and the results of the PotAS report. But it can be explained. And basketball is a special story.
Granacher tells how at some point they received an email from the DBB at the PotAS Commission. In it, the association asked not only to evaluate the performance of the women’s and men’s national teams for the current report, but also that of the so-called 3×3 formats. The DBB received this description at the request of Sport inside confirmed.
Commission Chairman Granacher says: “The consideration of the two new Olympic disciplines in 2020 was not beneficial for the classification of the entire association.” And the report actually shows that the basketball men alone would have performed better. In the end, it’s about the sport of basketball, and it doesn’t just consist of the men’s national team.
Sports scientist Güllich: “Doomed to fail”
Sports scientist Arne Güllich from the Technical University in Rhineland-Palatinate has long been involved in the promotion of sports in Germany. Top German sport, says Güllich in an interview with Sport inside, has been continuously reforming for many years. But these are often reforms that are limited to the administrative side. “The structure of elite sports funding itself is not questioned.”
PotAS is a current example of this, not only because the results of the last report do not match the sporting reality. Güllich sees an error in the system. “The organizational conditions that promote long-term success in basketball are completely different than those in rhythmic gymnastics or ski jumping,” he says. “But the goal of PotAS is to find a scheme that can be applied to all sports. That is doomed to failure.”
PotAS remains – and will be reformed
In mid-September, the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and the Ministry of the Interior announced new ones “Measures for the future promotion of top-class sport in Germany” presented. PotAS, said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser from the SPD, will not be abolished, but will be further developed and integrated into a so-called independent sports agency that is scheduled to start work in 2025. You become PotAS “drastically reduce bureaucracy”, for example by abolishing the “structures” evaluation criterion. Critics viewed this criterion as particularly bureaucratic.
Johannes Herber, spokesman for Athletes Germany, thinks it’s good that PotAS should continue to exist in the future. A basis is needed to define the probability of success, he told Deutschlandfunk. Some of the criticism that has recently been leveled at the system is also there “a bit flat”.
Ingo Weiss will also have an opinion on the future of PotAS, but so far he has not expressed it publicly. He did not respond to a request from Sport inside. A new PotAS report will be presented at the end of 2024. Basketball is unlikely to take last place again. And President Weiss should also like that.