IFF Member Associations´ Meeting Day 2 Summary – 12.12.2015

The IFF Vice President Mr. Filip Suman opened the second day of the IFF Member Associations´ Meeting. Cooperation between the IFF Member Associations was one of the main topics during the second day.

The day started with a Special Olympics presentation by Mr Mariusz Damentko, the Director of the Special Olympics Europe and Eurasia.

Special Olympics includes 32 sports and 4,6 million athletes with intellectual disability. Floorball is one of the sports on the programme of the Special Olympics World Winter Games.

- In 2011 only 10 countries had floorball on their programme. In 2014 already 34 countries offered floorball and the numbers are constantly growing. Mr. Damentko says.

36 Special Olympics Floorball countries will play in the Special Olympics World Winter Games in Graz, Austria, in March 2017. More on the Special Olympics World Winter Games: www.austria2017.org/en/

Each One - Teach One Project

The project started in 2011 in St. Gallen. A number of good initiatives and contacts have been taken between the countries since, but some are still in the planning stages.

Some examples of the launched EOTO projects:
- Good Governance Seminar for Denmark, Germany, Norway and Poland, ran by IFF
- Study visits of Germany to Switzerland Offices to learn best practices in administration
- Switzerland and Germany, coaching and refereeing exchange programme
- Finland helping Estonia with the Coaching education and the preparations for the WFCQ 2016
- Czech Republic and Slovakia have had mutual training camp for WU19 as a part of the EOTO
- Denmark and Sweden coaching and refereeing cooperation
- Referee exchange projects in Asia-> Singapore helping Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines
- Finland helping Canada to restructure the Canadian competition and to reorganise the player license system

The breakout session also touched upon the EOTO and focused on how to further develop the Project. The groups came up with the following ideas for improvement: More good examples needed, case studies and success stories to be shared, help from IFF needed to find the right partners and mentors, IFF to facilitate seminars and host education seminars at events, more feedback and evaluation, assistance in education issues needed, specific goals and deadlines need to be set, consider Erasmus programme as an additional resource, share development projects that can be utilised by for example neighbouring countries, IFF to push the projects forward

Brand Marketing and the IFF Combined Sales initiatives

It is without doubt that the number and level of international sponsors in floorball internationally and nationally are on a too low level to give enough resources to develop the sport forward.

- We all need to have the first real international sponsor. In order to reach this, we need to be able to provide a higher level of consumer contact hits. The Core Country Marketing Network Group has been working on the projects of the combined sales, the IFF Vice President Mr. Filip Suman informs.

In order to have a even distribution of events for the whole year, the following events are included in the package:
- World Floorball Championships Qualifications (5-6 Events) JAN/FEB
- IFF International weekend Feb
- National Cup Finals Jan-Mar
- National Finals Apr
- IFF International Weekend/Euro Floorball Tour Apr
- U19 World Floorball Championships May
- EuroFloorball Cup Qualifications Aug
- IFF International weekend/U19 WFCQ Sept
- IFF Champions Cup/IFF EuroFloorball Cup Oct
- IFF International Weekend/Euro Floorball Tour Nov
- World Floorball Championships Dec

The Target is to reach the following for the period 2017-2020:
- A maximum of three IFF International Sponsors
- A IFF Title Partner and two Main Partners

Sports, Match Fixing and Good Governance

Mr. Harri Syväsalmi, the Director of Sports, Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture & Chairman of the EU Council’s Expert Group on Match Fixing was the key note speaker of the second day.

The Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions:
- Match-fixing ticks all the boxes on organised international crime
- Online gambling is the fastest growing economic area in the EU
- The convention is the only rule of international law on the subject

Given the truly transnational character of the risk of manipulation of sports competitions and the necessity of combating this threat beyond European borders, this provision allows the convention to be applied on a wider scale.

The purpose of the Convention is to protect the integrity of sport and sports ethics in accordance with the principle of the autonomy of sport.

- It is very common to think that doping or match fixing, that these problems to not concern my country or my sport, it is only a problem of other sports. This perception is wrong. I do believe that floorball as a young sport has a very good chance to act on the forefront in protecting the sport and the clean athletes. The key issue is good governance, Mr. Syväsalmi stressed.

IOC Olympic Agenda 2020

“The Olympic Movement is all about the clean athletes. They are our best ambassadors, they are our role-models, they are our treasure. Therefore we have first and foremost to protect the clean athletes. We have to protect them from doping, match-fixing, manipulation and corruption. We have to change our way of thinking. We have to consider every single cent in the fight against these evils not as an expense but as an investment in the future of Olympic Sport“.

The IOC to use its extra USD 10 million to develop robust education and awareness programmes on the risks of match-fixing, any kind of manipulation of competitions and related corruption.

New IFF Materials

The new IFF School Curriculum and the updated IFF Organisers Handbook were presented during the meeting. These materials will be available for free on the IFF website soon.

Presentations of the Upcoming IFF Events

The upcoming event organisers gave their presentation on the upcoming events.

Women’s U19 World Floorball Championships 2016
The Women’s U19 WFC is played in Belleville, Canada, May 4th– 8th 2016 with 16 teams. More information on the official WU19 WFC 2016 website: http://floorball2016.ca

Official U19 WFC in social media accounts:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/U19WFC
Twitter: twitter.com/U19WFC
Instagram: instagram.com/u19wfc
#u19wfc #floorball

Champions Cup 2016
The 6th IFF Floorball Champions Cup in Borås, Sweden, September 30th-October 2nd 2016. Boråshallen will be the CC 2016 Arena, with the capacity of 2 500 spectators.

Participating teams:
- 2016 National champions of Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and  Czech Republic.
- The winner (or runner up) of the Swedish Super League (SSL) 15/16.
- The Champion of EuroFloorball Cup 2015: Nauka MP (RUS) and Greåker (NOR)

Arrivals/departures from Gothenburg
-  Landvetter Airport located only 40 km from Borås (25-30 minutes with car/bus).

Official CC social media account:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/FloorballChampionsCup 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/floorballcc  
Instagram: instagram.com/floorballcc
#iffcc2016 #floorball

Men’s World Floorball Championships 2016
The 11th Men’s WFC is played in Riga, Latvia, December 3rd-11th 2016.

WFC 2016 Arenas
Arena “RIGA” the main competition Arena.
The distance in between of Olympic Sports Centre and Arena Riga is 100 meters;
Spectator capacity: 10 300

Olympic Sports Centre
The 2nd competition Arena
Spectator capacity: 800

Men’s World Floorball Championships 2016 Qualifications
The schedules for the Men´s WFC Qualifications 2016 have been decided. There will be a total of 6 groups - four in Europe and one each in Asia-Oceania and the Americas.

Qualification to the WFC 2016 final round:
Direct (1): Latvia (organiser)
Europe (10): Top 2 per qualification plus 2 best 3rd placed teams
AOFC (3): Top 3
Americas (2): Top 2

The WFCQ 2016 Groups and schedules are found here.

WFC 2016 Group ballot
The group ballot will take place on April 9th, 2016, during Super Finals of ELVI Floorball league.