The Ski Federation has invested in ski jumping by hiring new coaches and acquiring Mika Kojonkoski as the sport director, so new sponsors will be needed.
On August 12, the Finnish Ski Federation has signed a new cooperation agreement with an Austrian company. The company will be ski jumping’s main partner for four years. In addition, a smaller ski jumping cooperation agreement has been concluded with a German company, says the commercial director of the Ski Association Jari-Pekka Jouppi.
– This changes the resource side of ski jumping in one fell swoop. Of course, we knew that we needed resources, because we have invested in the sport. We hired a sport manager Mika Kojonkoski and six new coaches, Jouppi said.
– We had to find bigger partners.
He does not yet say the names of the companies or the amounts.
In previous years, the main sponsor of ski jumping has been the Finnish office furniture company Modeo.
The attitude of Finnish companies is frustrating
It frustrates Jouppi that Finnish companies today do not want to support ski jumping. In the spring of 2021, the Ski Association’s commercial department took ski jumping into Joup’s words “big focus” and held long negotiations with 40 domestic companies. As a result, there were no major contracts at all.
– It saddens me beyond belief that Finnish companies don’t understand that you can get insane visibility for cheap. We can offer 300 million TV contacts during the World Cup season. It always boils down to you not doing well enough. The logic of doing disappears, Jouppi would say.
Due to the finicky attitude of the Finns, the Ski Federation turned its eyes to the ski jumping-crazy Central Europe, where it started looking for partners for this year.
– In Central Europe, the palette turns completely the other way around. Hill jumping is absolutely king there. Cross-country skiing is clearly the weakest Nordic skiing sport there in terms of spectator numbers.