When Swedish Johan Eliasch was elected as the new chairman of the International Skiing and Snowboarding Federation (Fis) in 2021, one of his big visions was to start the Fis Games, a kind of mini-Olympic with all of the federation’s disciplines.
The idea is that the games will be arranged in years when the WC or Olympics are not arranged.
At first it was announced that the first edition would be held in 2024, but it was postponed to 2028.
But it seems unclear whether it can be removed then. Yesterday, the Norwegian Ski Federation decided to drop out of the application project, which means that there is now only one candidate left: Switzerland.
TV contract missing
The problem for Fis? Even Switzerland hesitates. The reason: Lots of ambiguities.
Neither TV rights, cooperation agreement nor anything else has been signed. This means that Fis does not know how much money they can draw in or spend on the championship.
According to information provided to SVT, Norwegian NRK and Finnish EPN, Fis has told the organizing association that it can get around 70-90 million euros – that is, up to 1 billion Swedish kronor.
But the question marks have thus been too many. Both in terms of exactly which branches should be included in the games, but also the financial aspect. It has not been possible to get any financial guarantees or a sufficiently good overview of the risks of applying for the host.
“The board believes that it is absolutely necessary to get a better overview and knowledge of a number of the conditions before we decide whether Norway will apply again in the future,” writes the Norwegian Ski Association’s chairman Trove Moe Dyrhaug in a message.
But the Swiss Ski Federation remains as a possible organizer. At least for a while longer.
– At the moment, we are investigating the situation and analyzing whether we should proceed with the application. But we don’t have the whole picture yet, because there is some information that is not yet in place, says the Swiss Ski Federation’s Diego Züger.
More about the mess in Fis:
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Photo: Bildbyrån/SVT