Israel's Ministry of Culture and Sport is preparing to distribute close to 140 million shekels this year through its long-standing "Israeli player" incentive scheme, ONE reports, but the way the money is being carved up between sports has ignited a row among top-flight clubs.
The fund is not, despite its singular name, a payment tied to one footballer or basketballer's move. It is an annual grant the ministry pays out to Israeli clubs across several sports based on how much game time they give to Israeli-eligible players, a mechanism designed to encourage domestic development rather than reliance on imports.
According to the figures reported by ONE, men's Premier League football clubs are set to receive the largest single allocation, roughly 2.5 million shekels per team. But it is the sums below that which have caused the uproar: women's Premier League basketball clubs are in line for about 1.989 million shekels each, ahead of men's basketball clubs on roughly 1.584 million.
Women's Premier League football clubs, by contrast, are set for around 1.206 million shekels, with women's National League basketball teams receiving about 747,000 shekels. Men's volleyball clubs are pencilled in for roughly 432,000 shekels and men's handball clubs for about 374,000 shekels, ONE's breakdown shows.
The sticking point for football officials is the gap between the men's and women's basketball allocations and the money going to women's football, given that a football squad fields eleven players at a time against basketball's five and therefore carries far higher running costs per team.
ONE reports that clubs affected by the reshuffle were blunt in their frustration, with representatives complaining that "we built budgets and suddenly, without warning, they cut ours significantly," and questioning why basketball was prioritised in the recalculation.
The ministry, per ONE, has changed the criteria used to calculate the grants, moving away from a formula weighted toward popularity and instead giving more weight to a sport's genuine operating costs and to closing historic gaps in women's sport funding.
A ministry statement carried by ONE was unapologetic about the shift: "The ministry will not apologize for investment in women's sport," it said, framing the change as deliberate policy rather than an oversight.
The "Israeli player" scheme has been a fixture of state sports funding for several years, with ONE and other outlets having covered its annual reallocation before, and it channels money directly to clubs rather than to the sport's governing federations.
For now the figures reported are the ministry's allocations for the year rather than a final, audited settlement, and clubs on the losing end of the recalculation are likely to keep pressing the ministry publicly in the coming weeks.
