A total of 27 IFF Member Associations attended the sixth IFF Member Associations’ Meeting held on December 10th and 11th in Helsinki, Finland, in connection with the Men’s World Floorball Championships. The first day of the Associations’ Meeting focused on the IFF Strategy implementation, event evaluation as well as the role of athletes in sport organisations.

The meeting was held in hybrid format as some of the IFF Members could only attend virtually.

IFF Strategy implementation

IFF CB Member Mr. Stephen King gave a short presentation of  the IFF Strategy implementation plan:

– The  aim is to have all IFF members involved directly in working on the implementation of the Strategy and the actions. Therefore Strategy Working Groups have been established to oversee the development of actions. The first detailed action plan is planned to be reported back a the General Assembly 2022 in Switzerland.

Thereafter the participating Member Associations were divided into subgroups to discuss the possible actions to be taken in order to reach the targets of the Strategy. The Member Associations discussed then presented their ideas on how to improve the sport in one of the four key priority areas: Awareness and Visibility, Development, Service Level and Expansion, Governance, Sport Culture and Leadership, Sport presentation and Appearance.

Examples of actions proposed by the IFF Members:

• To really focus on the young generation in a number of different ways to increase awareness
• International Events and matches as drivers of awareness
• Events should be planned so that they contribute to developing the sport in the best possible way
• Floorball to start its own OTT platform to generate income
• Clubs and schools meed to have good relations to get kids involved
• Floorball equipment in schools still a challenge in small countries
• Player registration system a mandatory element for countries to gain income
• Educating teachers in schools is the key
• Different solutions to get the kids from schools into clubs, tournaments for kids are for example important
• Athlete participation in decision making important, taking conflict of interest into account
• Involving athletes from other sports also a good option
• Engaging the stars to gain influencers to promote the sport

The IFF Strategy 2021-2032 was approved by the IFF General Assembly 2020 and the document can be found here.

IFF partner presentation: Gerflor

Mr. Lionel Arlin from Gerflor, which has been the IFF flooring partner since 2000, presented the TARAFLEX flooring. The key benefits of the floor is that it is durable, safe and sustainable. For more information about Gerflor flooring, please visit Gerflor website.

IFF World Floorball Championships evaluation & Event hosting objectives

Mr. Krzysztof Kropielnicki from Quantum Consultancy presented the IFF WFC Event Evaluation Programme 2021-2024. Quantum is commissioned by the IFF to conduct a four-year event evaluation programme which will cover five editions of the World Floorball Championships (Men and Women).

–  The evaluation includes strategic framework monitoring and annual reporting to align with new IFF Strategy. For each edition of the WFC an evaluation report will be provided three-four months after the conclusion of the event. The Assessment covers impact categories including economic and tourism, to commercial and marketing, to social and sustainability. The WFC 2018 in Prague was the highest evaluated event experience in the world, so floorball events really have great potential to organise plenty of top events in the future, Mr. Kropielnicki explained.

The Member Associations then discussed and presented data indicators to be collected to demonstrate the impact and the value
of floorball to the Host city, Prospective sponsor and Prospective broadcaster.

Role of athletes in sport organisations

The introductory session was given by Mrs. Emma Terho, IOC Athletes Commission chair:

– Athlete involvement is the key for sport organisations nowadays, and the viewpoints of athletes should be taken into account. It is important to consult and receive feedback from the athletes, which is also being done currently at the IOC.

Then Ms. Agata Plechan, IFF Athletes Commission (ATC) Chair and member of the IFF Central Board, presented the IFF Athletes’ Commission and some of the work done by the IFF ATC:

– Some concrete things that we as the IFF ATC have managed to change is the longer international transfer window, which is now extended to January. We have also given feedback on the compression wear colour, and it is therefore no longer mandatory for players to have the same colour as the shorts. 

This presentation was followed by discussions on how to activate athletes within the National Member Associations and the IFF and the IFF Members then presented their ideas:

• The older the organisation gets the more important it is to involve the athletes as in young organisations the athletes are often still playing
• Athletes from different levels could be included in the Athletes’ Commissions
• Athletes might be more interested in operational level issues
• Athletes could be actively involved in different projects of the Member Association

Floorball Fit For Future Erasmus+ project report

The first day of the IFF Member Associations’ Meeting ended up with presenting the ongoing Erasmus+ project report. The Project proposal for the EU was done during 2019-2020 and approved by EU in October 2020. The project is based on co-operation between mentee National Associations from Denmark, Germany, Poland, Spain and Slovakia and mentor National Associations from the Czech Republic, Sweden and Switzerland. The aim with the project is to create a universal tool which helps floorball federations to develop and become stronger. More on the project is found here.

The IFF Member Associations’ Meeting continues on December 11th and summary news will be published after the meeting.