The story about the conflict of interest involving ETTU vice-president Ina Jozepsone caught the attention of a leading news outlet in Latvia. And for a reason. The Latvian Table Tennis Federation and European Table Tennis Union seem to have lost touch with reality.
Imagine a scenario in which a person gets a CEO position in a company and, year after year, this person presents losses in the annual financial report. Normally, such a CEO would either lose his job or be relegated to some minor role in the company. But what does ETTU do in a similar situation? It promotes a failed CEO to a higher position… Sounds absurd, yet itâs the harsh reality of European table tennis.
But letâs look at the numbers, so itâs not just a baseless claim. Thanks to our Latvian colleagues, we got a translation of the annual financial audits of the Latvian Table Tennis Federation (LTTF) and some other publicly available documentation related to this topic.
THE LATVIAN TABLE TENNIS FEDERATION’S FINANCES DURING JOZEPSONE’S PRESIDENCY
Ina Jozepsone has been a part of the Latvian Federation since 2000. In 2017, she was elected as the president of this federation, and you can see that LTTF is largely living off the Latvian government funds, or simply, the Latvian taxpayers’ money. Since Jozepsone became the president of LTTF, the government funds have made 41-75% of the federationâs budget, depending on the year. However, LTTF during her presidency has been awful in terms of generating income. On average, in these 8 years, income has been just 11%, so the federation can get back barely 1/10 of what it needs to simply exist.
The interesting part is the dynamics of the LTTF budget since 2021, when Jozepsone became the ETTU vice-president. Suddenly, the Latvian table tennis saw an influx of government funds, and the income also rose. You can clearly see a correlation between the ETTU vice-presidency and the growing budget of LTTF.
At the same time, itâs completely unclear why ETTU members entrusted this position to a national federation president who has run it so poorly for years. Is this a subsidiary project by ETTU to somehow boost the income of local federations by promoting the poorest table tennis countries into the European power positions? The answer is unclear, but it looks like basically anyone can get into vice-presidency, no matter how poorly the person works on the local level. You donât need any merits.
And if you think that table tennis in general lacks funding, you are right. But look at the next two infographics.
THE LITHUANIAN TABLE TENNIS ASSOCIATION’S FINANCES IN THE SAME TIME PERIOD
THE COMPARISON OF FEDERATION INCOMES – LATVIA VS. LITHUANIA
As you can see, the Latvian neighbor, Lithuania, has been generating 2.5 times more income during the same time period, and even during the pandemic, Lithuanians were able to generate a solid income. Lithuaniaâs worst-performing year wasnât far off from Latviaâs best-performing, which was during Jozepsone’s ETTU vice-presidency.
So one country is able to generate several times bigger income even without the patronage of ETTU, but you wonât find any Lithuanian representatives among the ETTU board. The Lithuanian table tennis level is also higher than the Latvian, but somehow the official from the poorest-performing country out of the three Baltic states is now representing Europe on the global table tennis stage.
Where are the professionals who should be improving the position of table tennis among dozens of more popular sports in Europe? You donât hire a manager from a small local company that isnât self-sustainable to become a manager at Amazon or Google.
Unfortunately, table tennis lacks competent leaders who could elevate this game. World Table Tennis has at least made some sort of improvements. In a few instances, WTT listened to the criticism from the fans and media. Itâs at least some sort of progress. ETTU looks like a laughing stock with its constant self-praise.
European table tennis overall seems to have a problem with these eternal officials, who spend decades as the board members of national federations. Like in the case of Jozepsone, who has been a part of the LTTF board for a quarter of a century, way too many people feel entitled to hold their influence forever. The problem of conflicts of interest is real, and it slows down the progress of table tennis as a sport.
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