Financing Of Sport by Local Government in Poland / Lenkijos vietos valdžios sporto finansavimas

The subject of the paper is the financing of sport, and broadly speaking: physical culture in Poland. This problem is a subject of interest in the context of the role played in its development by the local government units: gminas (NUTS level-5), poviats (NUTS level-4), and voivodships (NUTS level-2). The aim of the study is to assess the relationship between the amount of expenditure incurred from the budgets of local government units at all levels and the number of athletes in sports clubs in the area. This objective also includes the knowledge of spatial differentiation of both categories of research, and therefore the amount of expenditure of local government budgets on physical culture (per capita) and the number of athletes in sports clubs (per 1000 inhabitants). The study covers the entire Poland including territorial-administrative division of gminas, poviats and voivodships. The analysis is based on data from the years 2000 to 2013. The research allowed to classify voivodships in terms of the number of athletes in sports clubs per 1000 inhabitants and spending on development of physical culture (including sport). It enabled the presentation of the spatial structure of the analyzed categories (indicators). For the spatial classification the 3-Means Method has been used.