The domestic skiing competition season wrapped up in Rovaniemi over the weekend, but the planning of future national team patterns is hampered by the budget challenges of the Ski Federation.
The association suffered a setback on the final day of the Salpausselkä Games, when the second round of the men’s ski jumping individual competition had to be canceled due to windy conditions. The compensations paid for the TV contract are not public information, but according to Urheilu’s information, the cancellation will cause the Ski Federation to lose about 100,000 euros in income.
The Helsinki Ski Weeks, which preceded the Salpausselä Games, also spoke about the six-figure sum, which will be a minus for the union for the second year in a row. The amount also includes losses from the previous year.
The third minus, possibly of the same magnitude, concerns ski jumping. According to several insider sources, ski jumping’s budget overrun was already known early in the season.
The following quote is an excerpt from the minutes of the Ski Association’s board of directors, which is not public information, leaked to Urheilull.
“Expert in finance and administration Anne Lahdelma went through the financial situations of the sports: Combined doesn’t have a lot of operating room left, and ski jumping has gone over the budget by about a hundred thousand euros. Sports director Mika Kojonkoski goes over things with his team,” the minutes dated February 21 state.
Reached by Urheilu by phone, Kojonkoski describes that the aforementioned chapter and the text of the protocol came as a surprise to him.
– It is, of course, a matter of forecasting. The season ended two days ago, and we still don’t have the final financial monitoring. It was known that we are very tight and that the hill seems to be long, says Kojonkoski.
Kojonkoski, who was hired as the director of hill jumping and combined sports a year ago, estimates that the budget has been exceeded, especially in travel costs and the equipment budget.
According to Kojonkoski, the financial adjustment was made in the last meters of the season.
– As a result, for example, we canceled the northern camp at the end of the season before the Rovaniemi WC. We had to test next year’s skis at the camp, but we knew we didn’t have the budget for that anymore, says Kojonkoski.
According to Kojonkoski, his team tried to increase the budget given to ski jumping and combined last summer by looking for additional funding. According to him, this would have been found, but it came as a surprise to mäki and connected that the sums were not transferred directly to their budget. According to Kojonkoski, the union was informed just before the start of the competition season that the budget for the hill and the combined would be a freezing 85,000 euros.
– There was consultation with the executive director and shop steward management about what we can do. In practice, one option was to skip the competition activities or lay off the staff, but we decided not to do this. All measures that could be taken at that point have been agreed together, says Kojonkoski.
Hill jumping rescue teams
Executive Director of the Ski Association Ismo Hämäläinen does not want to comment on the outdated extract of the minutes and the sum of 100,000 euros. Mäkihyppy got a big Austrian sponsor for the finished season, but according to Hämäläinen, other sponsorship sales did not rise to the expected level. He emphasizes that the size of the budget overrun caused by ski jumping is not yet known.
According to Urheilu’s information, cross-country skiing seems to have stayed within its budget this season. According to the most recent public financial statements (2017–2020), ski jumping had been able to do the same for several seasons in a row, but the season that has just ended is an exception.
– If it ends up here (100,000), it will be a significant overshoot. However, we made a conscious choice in both ski jumping and combined, above all in ski jumping, that in order to ensure the World Cup competitions in the future, we must have successful athletes in the long term. A 7–8 year project was started. This has been a conscious choice at the board level, that it has to be this way. If ski jumping drops out, we have to discuss what will happen to our World Cup as a whole, says Hämäläinen.
One of the main sources of income for the Ski Federation is the compensation received from the TV contract, which is not public information. According to Urheilu’s sources, the compensation paid for the Men’s Ski Jumping World Cup competition is currently between 350,000 and 400,000 euros. In men’s combined, the amount is about a third. When you add up the contract values for men and women in cross-country skiing, you arrive at about half the value of men’s ski jumping.
The money from Mäkihypy’s TV contract plays the main role, when the Skiing Federation distributes any surplus to, for example, grassroots activities, i.e. club support. Both Hämäläinen and Kojonkoski insist on this.
– If we have ski jumping withering away in Finland, we won’t be able to take care of our World Cup competitions. We have to have a credible operation. It has been started to be built and an annual increase in the budget has been agreed upon, says Kojonkoski and continues:
– It is very important to review the current year’s economy in its euro, so that we have the best possible basis for building the next budget. Even at the moment, we are not on a credible path to the future. That’s my personal opinion.
So far, the development and equipment budget of the Finnish hill country team is ten times smaller than that of competing countries, Kojonkoski estimates.
– You have to be able to grow it little by little, but remembering that this is done with great motivation and reason rather than just money. Money alone doesn’t solve anything, but credible long-term operations need bigger resources than currently, says Kojonkoski.
Numbers to crunch
Exceptionally, the Ski Federation started this season with a budget already in the red, which was 150,000 euros short of its initial level. Now the question is how big the deficit will be.
However, the fact that the association has been able to reduce the losses of the 2017 World Cup in Lahti by half a million euros faster than the payment arrangement requires serves as a kind of buffer.
– In the same way as in all sports organizations, we struggle with rising costs. And when the funding from the state does not increase at least, on the contrary, then of course the outlook is challenging. But the situation is under control, President of the Ski Association Markku Haapasalmi says.
– It is, of course, clear that spending control is especially needed at times like this. We have to budget very carefully now what we can afford. The challenge is that the increased partnership income has not necessarily increased in the same proportion as the costs.
According to Hämäläinen, the above-mentioned factors in the budget for the last season do not yet give the opportunity to announce next season’s camps and national teams.
– We cannot publicize things for which we do not yet have the operating conditions. Operations and finances go hand in hand.
– The goal is to be able to announce the teams in the next two weeks. However, it depends on how we can crunch the numbers overall.
Change in accounting period
In the coming months, Hämäläinen and his partners also have a lot of work to do in merging the possible Ski Sport Finland ry, i.e. alpine skiing and freestyle, back into the Ski Federation. Urheilu reported in January about the investigation, which is still in progress.
Ski Sport Finland ry would bring approximately 300,000 euros of negative capital to the Ski Federation. The skiing association still has a negative capital from its own back of around 1.5 million euros from the 2017 World Championships in Lahti.
In the spring, the ski association’s federal council decided to extend the 31.5. fiscal year ending at the end of October. According to Hämäläinen, the change is not due to the figures mentioned above or the possible entry of Ski Sport Finland.
– In terms of extending the accounting period, the goal is by no means to try to embellish the result. In any case, we make two financial statements, so to speak, that is, we compare the result with the previous one and make a transition of five months on top of it.
– The accounting period is changed so that we can always ensure the completion of the competition season. Through it come the chips for the camping and training season. Until now, it has been really difficult to predict the costs, especially during the competition season, says Hämäläinen.