The aim was to make as much as half a million euros from the track and field event, but despite the excellent contribution of the Finnish athletes, about 200,000 euros remained.
The Sweden-athletics track and field match held every other year in Finland traditionally belongs to the financial foundations of the sport’s umbrella organization, the Sports Confederation. The association’s office had very high expectations for the international match organized at the Olympic Stadium at the turn of August and September.
The CEO of the association Harry Aalto told Urheilu on Tuesday that the financial goals were not met at the end of the season of the two prestigious competitions, even though Finland won both the men’s and women’s match on the field for the first time in 26 years.
– The association’s goal for the event was a profit of around 500,000 euros. That leaves about 200,000 euros. The calculations are still being refined, but the order of magnitude is this, Aalto says.
The setback also means that SUL will not make a significant profit in its accounting period (January-December 2024), despite hosting international matches. According to Aalto, at the moment it seems that the financial statements show either a very small profit or a loss. The financial statements with a plus sign in even years of international matches have been important buffers for the association for odd years.
– The goal of half a million international matches was tough, but not ambitious. We consider the achieved result to be satisfactory, but the fact is that we did not get the ticket buyers to move as intended, Aalto admits.
No help from value competitions
He considers one of the reasons to be the fact that the only Finnish race medal of the season – by Oliver Helander from the javelin bronze at the European Championships in Rome – almost three months had passed by the time of the national competition. And the main event of the season, i.e. the Olympic Games in Paris, didn’t win any medals for Finland in track and field sports either, although the overall contribution of the track and field athletes in France was good in many respects.
– Of course, the situation was different in 2022, when the match was sold Wilma Murron and Raitanen’s top with fresh European championships from Munich. Now one negative variable for us can of course be counted as Wilma’s health misfortune during the season. The success of the competition always affects the ticket sales of the national match, says Aalto.
Two years ago, around 44,000 spectators followed the national match at the stadium over two days, now around 30,000. In 2022, the profit was around 400,000 euros.
The future of the Sweden match has been painted in dark colors for a long time, but CEO Aalto still sees a long future for the product.
– It is still worth emphasizing that even though we did not reach our financial goal, from the perspective of the Sports Association, it does not affect how our top athletes are able to prepare for, for example, the World Championships in Tokyo next year.
During the 2015-2020 major renovation of the Olympic Stadium, the international match was held in Tampere, where the Sports Federation got Ratina’s stadium for use very cheaply. At the National Shrine, the Sports Association pays the Stadion foundation a six-figure sum for the national match. However, the CEO does not hide behind this.
– At the stadium, after the renovation, we now automatically have almost everything at our disposal, which previously required a lot of effort and some expensive temporary construction.