If the action plan of the Ski Federation is to be trusted, Iivo Niskanen alone makes as much money with sponsors as the entire country’s cross-country team, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen
The spring of the Finnish Ski Association was predicted to be heavy like a stone sled pulling in the snow cover, but it turned out to be even blacker. First, the union and its commercial company reported losses of almost two million euros in March. After this, as expected, it was reported that the executive director Ismo Hämäläinen is freed for headhunters to contact.
On Monday, Urheilu got hold of a message in which the federation de facto says that it will shut down the national team functions of two of its three sports, i.e. combined and ski jumping, for the time being. The news shocked sports circles, because ski jumping training is not possible without organized coaching and camp activities. The union cannot promise either.
In the meantime, the union’s golden egg, i.e. the three-time Olympic champion, received less attention Iivo Niskanen the announcement that he is not spending the A national team’s budget even in the starting training season.
Cruel Excel
At the end of the week, Urheilu received from an insider of the A national team a confidential Excel table prepared by the Ski Federation, which contains the framework plan of the national ski team for the starting season. If Iivo Niskanen had familiarized himself with the material before his decision, it is no wonder that the national hero voted with his feet.
The camping budget of the A national team is stated in the table as 60,000 euros. That is, if in the future the strength of the A national team, known as the Olympic group, will be 6 men and 6 women, a resource of no less than 5,000 euros would be released for each. Because Niskanenka doesn’t camp much further than Nilsia from Kuopio.
However, the rudest number was found in the top row. According to it, the operation would be planned at this stage on the basis of a partner pot of 416,000 net euros. For dozens of Finnish national teams, it would be a huge amount of sponsorship money, but for the cross-country national team, it is a miserable performance.
At this point, the income side of the national team is 814,000 euros, and the expenditure side, including coach salaries, maintenance trucks and competition season expenses, is almost two million. Everyone can then paint a numerical landscape from it.
Superstars make a million
According to the most informed estimates, Iivo Niskanen’s own sponsorship pot alone is more than 400,000 euros per year, his sister I gather and Krista Pärmäkoski according to experts, the market value of both is around 300,000 euros.
After all, they have been primarily responsible for the international success of the entire sport for a long time. But the situation says much more about how the Ministry of Education and Culture’s state aid department is doing got the million pot The Ski Federation has succeeded in turning its crown jewel into hard cash. After all, it is, along with the ice hockey, football and athletics national team, a nationally highly followed, loved and significant sports institution.
For comparison, for example, the value of the partnership pot of the athletics umbrella organization Urheiluliito is around 2.5 million euros.
According to Urheilu’s information, the cross-country team’s partnership situation has weakened very quickly, from which it can be concluded that this is not the last time the union has been hit by a labor relations issue. If we take a more temporal perspective, for example, in the 2017–2018 season, cross-country skiing received about 1.1 million euros in direct partnership money.
Urheilu asked an opinion on the matter from a person who has made a successful life’s work specifically by selling sports, sports events and athletes.
– Sales of cross-country skiing should be at least twice that, so that it could even be called satisfactory. Murderous numbers, was the assessment.
This spring has also for the first time seriously asked whether the Finnish Ski Federation can really go bankrupt – from which the society saved the Sports Federation after the unfortunate European Championship operation in 2012.