Prague, Jan 21 (CTK) – The Synot gambling group will not financially support the top Czech football league any longer due to the higher taxation imposed on gambling, the group said in a press release issued yesterday.
Synot has been the main sponsor of the Czech football league.
“Though our group is strong, unfortunately, its foreign companies cannot subsidise the enterprise in the Czech Republic and pay for the very shortsighted and populist steps taken by the Czech government that makes life hard for Czech businesspeople and self-employed people,” Synot owner Ivo Valenta said.
Valenta is a senator elected for the Party of Entrepreneurs.
Synot will lose hundreds of millions of crowns because of the new Czech legislation.
Synot director Neofytos Neofytou said the Czech state took so much money from the Czech firms that are part of Synot Group that support to sport activities must be markedly lowered.
As of the next season, Synot Group will sponsor neither the football clubs of Sparta Praha and Jablonec, nor the basketball club of Nymburk, nor the Czech Association of Sport (CUS).
The group said it would keep sponsoring sport in the regions of Moravian Walachia and Moravian Slovakia in the eastern part of the Czech Republic, in which Valenta has been living.
In 2004, Valenta was accused over involvement in corruption related to the top league club FC Synot (now Slovacko). A court imposed a suspended sentence and a fine on him and banned him from football for two years.
Synot has sponsored the top football league since May 2014. The financial conditions of the four-year contract with a option for another four years were not released, but it was estimated that Synot gave the league about 60 million crowns a year. The previous sponsor, the Gambrinus brewery, annually gave 40-50 million to the league.
The annnual turnover of Synot Group in the Czech Republic is about ten billion crowns.
“We have expected this development in connection with the change of the lottery law. The decision of Synot Group has not surprised us at all,” Czech Football Association head Miroslav Pelta said.
Dusan Svoboda, head of the Football League Association, said Synot’s decision to terminate the eight-year contract was bad news. He said he appreciated that the league received the information already now and had enough time to seek a new general sponsor.
($1=24.789 crowns)
