– No names should be put on any papers now.
A skiing insider doesn’t hold his candle when asked how he sees the situation of the Finnish Ski Federation in the selection of the host city for the 2029 World Ski Championships.
In March, the Ski Federation submitted a WC application in cooperation with the Lahti Ski Club and the city of Lahti, and no other applicants came by the deadline. The choice of Lahti as the 2029 World Cup city is therefore only a formality. The official selection is scheduled to be announced at the FIS Congress on June 4, 2024.
However, there are still many bumps in the road. In the insider’s opinion at the beginning, the emphasis is on the word now and in the negotiations of the coming months.
The reason for the hesitation can be found in the current state of FIS. The big skiing countries are tired of the dictating policy of the international umbrella organization.
Ski federations like Finland that organize World Cup competitions are dependent on FIS’s media and marketing agreement, which in its current form ends in the 2025–2026 season. The big skiing countries are upset that the FIS has prepared a new agreement without them. Despite the fact that the agreement is vital for the basic operations of the ski resorts.
The sports circles’ problems with the umbrella organization are not limited to this. FIS’s non-existent information policy regarding the fluoride ban caused the national federations to incur millions of extra expenses. It also recently became apparent that FIS’s own finances would have been in the freezing cold for more than 12 million euros last year, if the association had not sold its holdings for more than eight million euros.
It is not even excluded that the big European skiing countries will leave the FIS. The National Ski Associations want to be involved in the decision-making that is important to them and, above all, in the preparation of the decisions.
40 percent
The insiders interviewed by Urheilu are not against Lahti’s bid for the World Cup this year, on the contrary. However, they urge the Ski Association to take strong measures so that the organization, as the only applicant, gets the best possible WC contract.
– Now if you ever have to know how to play hard against hard, another high-ranking insider states.
Unlike the World Cup, FIS owns the media and marketing rights for the World Cup. The money in question moves directly from FIS to the Ski Federation during the World Championships.
When Lahti organized the World Ski Championships in 2017, the budget for the Games was 20 million euros. Of the sum, 8 million euros, or 40 percent, came from FIS. The Ski Federation made a loss of 2.8 million euros from the Games.
– After Lahti, the Seefeld Games (World Cup 2019) went to shit financially. However, in the contract structure, the financial responsibility was with the local organizer, which reduced the union’s risk. The Games in Planica (MM 2023) would also have been a disaster if the government had not pumped money through the Visit Slovenia brand, a source reminds.
The previous World Cup skiing that made a profit for its organizers was from 2015. At that time, the competitions were held in Falun, Sweden, from which the Swedish Skiing Association netted 5.2 million euros. The 2021 World Cup skiing in Oberstdorf is not comparable due to the corona bubble.
The next World Ski Championships will be held in Trondheim, Norway in 2025, and Falun will be next in 2027. When Trondheim hosted the World Championships for the last time in 1997, tickets for 15 events were sold for a total of more than 300,000. In 2015, the organizers of Falun sold a total of 228,000 tickets for 21 events, when again in 2017, Lahti’s reading remained at 180,000 in 21 sports.
Right now, Sweden and Norway are the top two countries in terms of skiing success, and their winners are also young. Considering the previous World Cup arrangements and the current success, it can at least be assumed that the World Cup organizers in Lahti are more dependent on the media and marketing money received from FIS than their Nordic counterparts.
– If the Ski Federation doesn’t get the deal it wants or needs from FIS, putting the competition on the shelf would not be a shame. When there are no counter-candidates, the Ski Association now has a bargaining chip that it needs to know how to use, says an insider.
The chairman does not comment on the amounts
The sources interviewed by Urheilu emphasize that for the time being, the Ski Association can influence the most on its own internal agreement with the Lahti Ski Club and the city of Lahti. In the previous home games, the Ski Federation practically carried the financial risk alone.
Chairman of the Ski Association Markku Haapasalmi admits that the Ski Association cannot afford to repeat the financial mistakes of the previous games.
– When I started as chairman (autumn 2017), Lahti’s economic disaster was in the background. It has been such an experience for all of us that the contract for the upcoming World Cup will be looked at very carefully. FIS’s money is the biggest thing, but then the contributions of all the different parties are seen on paper with oval pupils. The 2029 World Cup must be a plus for all parties.
According to Haapasalmi, the Ski Federation does not yet have information on the amount, how much FIS’s media and marketing contract is for the 2029 World Championships.
The Ski Federation received 8 million euros from FIS at the 2017 World Championships. What amount does the Ski Association aim for in order to realistically achieve a positive result?
– It must be significantly larger. It’s been a while since the 2017 World Cup, and when you think about all the costs that have risen since then, which we are fighting with here… The amount has to be bigger, and of course it is. But I really can’t say that yet and I’m not going to speculate on it here. That much we know, of course, is that it is significantly bigger, says Haapasalmi.
The digital newsletter published by FIS on November 1 shows that the umbrella organization’s World Cup revenues from all skiing disciplines have decreased from 2019 to 2022. There has also been no positive development in the cash flows from the Olympic and World Championships.
Insiders feel that if the Skiing Federation does not get the amount of money it is aiming for from the FIS, the Skiing Federation must understand to fight hard with the FIS. Since there are no other applicants, insiders see the Ski Association as being in a good negotiating position. Do you feel that the Ski Association has a bargaining chip?
– I don’t want to speculate on this matter. I repeat that now we are looking at what the sum of Trondheim and Falun is, and at what stage we will know exactly, first of all, what is the offer coming to us that we will get to evaluate. Before then, this matter is a bit difficult to evaluate and fruitless to think about.
– There are four years between the Trondheim and Lahti Games. If Trondheim gets something, for example, will we get index increases and so on.
Lahti already has all the infrastructure needed to organize the World Cup. Is the 2029 World Cup selection in a hurry, when the FIS is buzzing around right now anyway?
– The selection goes according to the FIS schedule. It has certain processes by which it goes. We are on that schedule. We cannot influence how urgent the World Cup selection is.
– Right now, there are no ongoing negotiations regarding this issue. Now let’s look at this world of media contracts in general. We will come back to this (World Cup search) when we get views from FIS about what that (media and marketing) amount could be. Then we start discussing it. There has to be some basis to discuss. And there is no such thing at the moment, Haapasalmi concludes.