The Sweden match held at the Olympic Stadium will probably fall short of the audience target. According to Jari Töykä, several concerts may affect this.
Sweden match on channels 30.–31.8. on TV2, Areena, Radio in Finland and the app. Shipping information here.
The traditional national match against Sweden ends, at least for the most part, the Finnish athletics season. The international match will be held at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium, just like the 2022 international match.
Two years ago, the success of Finland’s four medals at the European Championships in Munich brought a good boost to the event. During the two days, the audience was more than 44,000 spectators, while the current capacity of the Olympic Stadium is 36,200.
The Finnish Sports Association’s original goal was to reach the figures of two years ago, but the CEO of SUL’s marketing company Jari Töykän it’s hardly possible to get involved. There has been a good increase in ticket sales in recent days.
– As the last event of this tough summer of events, we will probably reach a reasonably nice result. For sure, we will go to more than 30,000 viewers.
Finland did not receive a medal in athletics at the Paris Olympics, although otherwise the Finnish track and field athletes did well overall.
Töykkä does not know how to assess whether the lack of medals affects the general public’s spending decision.
– The season has been long, so at some point even the sports consumer gets tired. Two years ago there was a new stadium, which had its novelty value. There have been many events at the stadium this year.
A clear change was made for this year, where both competition days will be held in the evening. In Finland, the last day of the match against Sweden has long been on Sunday afternoon.
– It may be that it has some effect. You can’t really come to Helsinki from the provinces on Friday night.
PMMP and Coldplay
A lot of music events have been held at the Olympic Stadium this summer. Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay and PMMP have performed at the stadium on several days.
Töykkä speculates that the events in question may have an effect on how many people come to the match against Sweden. He sees that some consumers do not come to the national match purely for the sport, but for the experience.
– The summer of events has been exceptional in Helsinki. Certainly, those consumers who want to come to sporting events will come, regardless of whether there have already been concerts here or something else.
– Even in sports, there are those who want to come for the experience. I understand that for those looking for experiences who have been to Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay and PMMP’s gigs and in between at the Flow festival and a few festivals, the dose can be full. It is human and understandable.
Töykkä sees that a traditional event like the Sweden match needs not only athletics fans and other sports fanatics, but also a different kind of audience.
– I believe that Coldplay and PMMP’s concerts have had a lot of visitors besides myself who are not necessarily fans of the bands in question. However, we want those experiences.
Let’s take advantage of the darkness
Töykkä says that it is rare for a sports event in a place like the Olympic Stadium to be filled with only sports fans. According to him, the Sports Association aims to ensure that the aforementioned experiences can also be obtained from athletics competitions.
Partly for this reason, we now want to try two evening parts in the national match.
– In this way, we can better get business guests to the Friday evening. We wanted two such darkening August evenings to have a show element towards the end. The concerts start at nine. We have a bit of the same idea, that we can make use of the darkness in creating an event experience.
– There is no right or wrong solution. We’ll see in two years whether we continue with this or return to the Saturday-Sunday model.
This time, the adults’ country match will be played on Friday evening from 18:30 to 21:30 and on Saturday evening from around 17:35 to 21:35.
Sweden match on channels 30.–31.8. on TV2, Areena, Radio in Finland and the app. Shipping information here.