Behind the scenes of skiing, there is a fierce battle for money.
The Nordics broadcasting companies Over, SVT and NRK reported on Wednesday evening that eight leading skiing countries are threatening to form their own “super league”.
In August 2022, the Ski Associations of Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Slovenia founded a coalition under the name Snowflake. They are dissatisfied with the activities of the International Ski Federation Fisi, the chairman by Johan Eliasch in the era.
The disgruntled eight have been discussing their ideas for change for a year and a half, reportedly every week.
The main reason for the dissatisfaction is the TV rights. Until now, the organizers of the World Cup have been allowed to sell their own TV rights.
Eliasch wants to reform the system. He wants to sell the rights centrally. Last summer, Fis announced that it had agreed with the Infront company to sell the World Cup TV rights from 2026 onwards. In this way, the national unions would be completely excluded from the process.
The national unions were outraged, as they were kept out of the negotiations. They also hope for the centralization of rights, but in a different way than how Fis implemented it.
Now The Snowflake group considered the establishment of its own, separate ski league. In that case, it would control all media rights and could run the competitions as it wanted.
On Wednesday, representatives of Snowflake met the management of Fis for the first time. The associations of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden participated. The Ski Association was not there.
“The meeting was held in a constructive spirit. We will meet again in a few weeks”, executive director of the Swedish Ski Association Pernilla Bonde told Yle.
Bonde was tight-lipped about the separate racing series.
“Our goal is to reach an agreement with Fisi. That's what we're working on now.”
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