Floorball | Floorball’s amazing leap can be summed up in a few pictures – Why did the sport look for growth with desperate kicks?

Zürich

International Secretary General of the Floorball Association IFF John Liljelund is satisfied. The men’s World Cup in Switzerland has already exceeded its main goals.

The TV signal from the Games goes to more than 20 countries. In sponsor sales, the budget has been exceeded by 40 percent. Ticket sales reached their goal even before the quarterfinals began.

“Now we are on pace for 140,000-150,000 viewers. The total budget for the games is six million Swiss francs, and the probability that the games will produce a positive result is very high,” says Liljelund.

The main stage of the World Cup is Zurich’s new pride, the Swiss Life arena, which is located more than five kilometers from the city center.

The hall, which was opened a month ago, attracts around 10,000 spectators at the World Cup, i.e. 2,000 less than at the Zurich Lions’ ice hockey games, because there are no standing stands for the floorball audience.

“The hall is so new that many practical things are still being worked out. For example, it’s a bit difficult to get around when you can’t find key cards for all the doors.”

Swiss Life -arena, the World Championships and Liljelund really encapsulate a lot about the current state of floorball and the tremendous development.

Floorball is able to organize the World Championships, the final event of which can be compared to other sports by almost any measure.

Every two years, the best indoor bandy countries in the world collide in one of the top European arenas, like now in Zurich. The stands are filled with fans who come from different parts of Europe and also from other continents.

At the World Cup, the national federations make a tangible financial profit at their best, although there is no question of sums comparable to the million-dollar jackpots of the Finnish Hockey Association.

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“Perhaps the government got too excited and thought that this could be the right way to expand the width of the tip.”

Floorball the development has been very fast. In Finland, many top players speak warmly about their beloved sport, even though in terms of sport, floorball is far from the form of the game in the early days.

Liljelund remembers how his team, Team Botby from Helsinki, played in the Finnish Championship in the Helsinki industrial hall in the mid-1990s.

“Without exaggerating, maybe 35 spectators could fit there.”

For Sunday’s final, the Zurich arena is likely to be somewhat full, as was the former Hartwall arena in previous games and before that the O2 arena in Prague in 2018.

Fast despite the development, IFF has had a downright compulsive need to move the sport forward even faster.

Finnish floorball fans in particular have been horrified by the speed. The IFF’s ideas about shortening the playing time to 3×15 minutes, reducing the number of players on the team and developing the sport under the condition of Olympic dreams have been completely defeated.

Now also IFF has distanced himself to more radical ideas and considers new, more moderate ways to spread floorball’s good news.

Why has the species tried to grow with seemingly desperate chicks?

According to Liljelund, the roots are in the 2017 World Games, a multi-sport event, where floorball was included for the first time with a shorter playing time and smaller teams.

In the eyes of the IFF and others, going to the top of the leaderboard in the rink looked obviously fast, and the level seemed to be wider than it perhaps actually was.

“Perhaps the government got too excited and thought that this could be the right way to expand the width of the tip,” says Liljelund.

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“However, we need a lot more hard work than we currently do, instead of just making rule solutions.”

The IFF board was faced with a real problem to the extent that floorball has become a sport dominated by four countries: Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

Only Finland and Sweden have won championships in men’s prestigious competitions. In the Women’s World Cup tournament, Switzerland has also been able to raise a pitcher once.

This is one of the reasons why floorball doesn’t want to get the recognition it needs, even in the great countries of the sport.

IFF worked and worked on reform proposals until this fall he concluded that this road has been exhausted.

The opposition of the big floorball countries was so strong that the IFF is trying to find a new direction in its development work, as long as the general assembly approves the plans in the meeting organized in connection with the World Cup.

The goal is to further expand the international top, increase recognition and visibility, and attract more players to the sport than at present.

“However, we need a lot more hard work than we currently do, instead of just making rule solutions,” states Liljelund.

In other words, floorball doesn’t try to get quick wins with tricks or look for a shortcut to success.

Of course, the rules can also be changed in a direction that would reduce the rotation of the ball safely in one’s own area and speed up the game.

As a new attraction, IFF is considering a three-on-three mini-game as a low-threshold starter version of floor bandy. Basically, however, the purpose is not to stick to the 3×20-minute game format or the number of players of competitive indoor bandy anymore.

Instead, the IFF aims to support more smaller national associations by developing coach training and refereeing activities, as well as providing training in organizational activities. Thus, small indoor bandy countries would get new tools to develop their own activities.

In addition, the sport’s own international training center is under development. The international ice hockey training center in Vierumäki serves as a kind of example.

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“The sports world is changing around us. We have to be able to react to that and think about what we want from this sport in the future.”

Visibility for the sport can be gained, for example, through shared value competitions, in which case smaller countries could participate in the World Cup fun as competition organizers.

According to Liljelund, the first priority is to get more fans into floorball – as well as more teams, series and conditions for national activities.

“Only then can the species grow.”

Internationally the number of fans is indeed increasing, but in the great country of floorball, Finland, the growth has stopped for the time being.

Attracting enthusiasts to the sport is also not getting any easier, as new sports are being created all the time and the competition for juniors is fierce.

In addition, the size of the age groups in Finland is decreasing. There are fewer and fewer children. Floorball’s now seemingly strong position is not automatically and forever set in stone.

“The sports world is changing around us. We have to be able to react to that and think about what we want from this sport in the future.”