Cross-country skiing, Winter sports | The FIS president in Norway’s throat: – A joke

– It is a joke, to be honest, what they have proposed, says Eliasch to NRK.

The background is an ongoing conflict between the FIS and “Snowflake”, a group consisting of seven of the largest ski nations in the world.

– Snowflake only wants to transfer ownership and management to itself. In that case, Snowflake will become the new international Skiing Association. Then the FIS would be history, says Eliasch.

The dispute concerns large sums of money.

At the end of April, the FIS board decided that they should proceed with a controversial agreement.

Previously, the countries themselves sold their TV rights, but now FIS wants to sell them on behalf of all member countries.

Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Germany are among the countries that have reacted.

They believe that FIS no longer works for the confederations, but has lost sight of its original purpose.

It was in August last year that FIS sent out a press release with the agreement that had been concluded with the rights company Infront.

The agreement entails, among other things, that 30 million Swiss francs must be distributed equally to all 75 member countries of the FIS. In addition, you must get money when you organize world cup races. Here, you are guaranteed a ten percent increase in income over an eight-year period, writes NRK.

The Snowflake group claims they have repeatedly given feedback and requested meetings with FIS, without being heard.

Eliasch claims Snowflake has neither given feedback on the agreement nor come up with a concrete alternative to the agreement.

Terje Lund is the man who leads the work in the Snowflake group from the Norwegian Ski Association’s side. He is very negative about the agreement.

– We don’t think it has good enough governance principles. We don’t think the economics of it are good enough, and it is also based on a model that treats all the branches equally, says Lund.

He believes that there is great variation in the income potential of the various branches of FIS. Through Snowflake, they have therefore launched a model where the rich must give a little more to the poor and they must support to a greater extent than what is outlined in the outline for FIS.