The Italian organizers already know that they are dry, even if ticket sales for the European Championships fail completely. In Finland, the race boss would already grease the rope, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen
Head of the organizing committee for the European Championships in Rome, president of the Italian Athletics Federation Stephen Me took to the stage near the Stadio Olimpico on Friday evening.
His face was like Hanko’s cookie, and his mouth was like a man’s legs during the golden finish of the 10-ton European Championship in Stuttgart in 1986.
At the same time, the marketing of the games has failed completely, and the tickets have done poorly, even though they are being pushed as half-free. On the opening day, the stadium was still in a terrible condition, the traffic logistics were slow and the athletes had not received such small necessities as water bottles or fences on the training field.
No worries
While Stefano Mei’s face showed no sign of worry about such trivial details, the Finnish colleague of the Ligurian race boss would already grease the rope on the opening day.
Let’s go back in time 12 years and to the ship atmosphere of the European Championships in Helsinki – the first championships of the old continent organized in the Olympic year. The management of the sports association at the time had invited the key media to break the sparkling wine in honor of the start of the wonderful event.
From the gentlemen’s gray faces, it was immediately apparent that a slightly stronger liquid would have been fine. The sales of the Games had failed completely; the crushing loss of millions of euros had already materialized even before the first competition performance.
Rescue from bankruptcy
The result was finally 15 million with a turnover of about 3.6 million euros minus. Only the extra state aid of one million euros, granted very reluctantly by the Ministry of Education and Culture, saved the sports organization SUL from bankruptcy.
The state was blackmailed into the talks by the European Athletics Federation, which owns the European Championship brand, which would not have paid SUL the 1.2 million euro ex post life-saving money without the participation of Finnish society in the talks.
Let’s go back to the ex-great runner Stefano Mei mentioned above. Sitting on the board of the European Athletics Federation Antti Pilhakoski explains the man’s Zen-like peace of mind in a situation where Titanic’s deck bar is already playing the last slow song of the evening.
– The organization grant given to the Games by the Italian state, the province of Lazio and the city of Rome was a total of 14 million euros. The European Athletics Federation is responsible for the prize money, i.e. one million euros.
The money will come back
Every instance knows that the invested money comes back in at least the same amount, probably bigger, through various indirect routes. Because of this, for example, Amsterdam helped its own European Championships in the Olympic year 2016 with ten million euros.
The sports run by the Finnish Ski Association are not the first ones on the tongue in Rome, but they can give perspective to what is written above.
The Ski Federation made a loss of the same magnitude, 2.8 million euros, from its own World Championships in 2017 as the Sports Federation in 2012.
Others get rich
The empty galleries of the Olympic stadium in Rome reveal the question of the fate of Finland’s championship history – with the exception of the hockey World Cup.
The Finnish model, where the responsible race organizer enriches all other parties, from restaurateurs and accommodation providers to taxi drivers and so on, but experiences a loss himself, has come to an end.
Helsinki is applying for the 2030 European Championships. The majority of opponent cities are located in countries where the finances of the Games are already dry at the time of awarding thanks to the contribution of society.
Finland is a rather lonely exception, even if it considers itself a kind of sports country.
Nostrils above water level
Because of this, this time the Skiing Federation does not agree to sign the agreement on organizing the World Championships until it also leaves the nostrils of the piste skiers above the water level at the so-called last line.
If in the future Finland still wants to organize value competitions with a large selection of sports, they must receive money from the society in advance, not afterwards.
Sports associations can no longer take crazy risks at the expense of their core activities.
Another option worth considering is to forget the whole thing.