The board of Jokerit Helsinki Oy has decided that Jokerit will not play in the men’s ice hockey SM league in the 2025–26 season, even if they won the Mestis championship and the league qualifiers in the previous season.
Emma Hyuppa,
Matti Lehtisaari
The board of Jokerit Helsinki Oy has decided that Jokerit, who plays in hockey Mestis, will not seek a place in the men’s SM league for the 2025–26 season.
Helsinki club the announcement states, that promotion to the main league is the club’s goal, but under the current conditions it is not possible. The SM league decided in October that from the 2024–25 season, Mestis can enter the league through qualifying. That is, if the champion of Mestis wins at the end of the season in the qualifying round the last team in the SM league and fulfills the League’s license conditions, it will be promoted to the SM league for the next season.
Chairman of the board of Jokerit Helsinki Oy Mikko Saarni says that over the past month, the board has investigated in more detail the license conditions set by the SM league, and stated that the promotion would be too expensive at the current league share price.
The largest single cost related to promotion to the league is the league share, the price of which is estimated to be 3.8 million euros for the Jokers, the Jokers’ press release says.
– Depending on the calculation method, promotion to the league costs us 7–9 million euros. The current conditions are so bad for the Jokers and they dilute our highest values so badly that we cannot go along with it. We cannot justify it to ourselves or to the Jokerit community, Saarni tells Urheilu.
According to Saarni, the most important themes of the Joker’s strategy are responsibility, securing and developing one’s own junior work to the top European level, and the club’s financial self-sufficiency.
Jokerit says that they are aiming for the Mestis championship in the 2024–25 season, even if it does not result in promotion to the main league.
– We cannot influence what the League does. We follow those decisions. We still want to play at the highest possible level in the future, but it has to happen in a way that makes sense for the Jokers, says Saarni.
In 2014, Jokerit left the domestic SM league for the Russian KHL, where it played until February 2022. Due to the war of aggression started by Russia in Ukraine, the Jokerit left the KHL in the spring of 2022, and returned to the domestic rinks in Mesti after one gap year in the fall of 2023. The Jokerit is currently fifth in the Mesti.