The fight for power in the world winter sports association FIS has reached a new dimension. Stars like Mikaela Shiffrin and Marco Odermatt, numerous council members and national associations such as the German Ski Association (DSV) have written a letter criticizing President Johan Eliasch’s apparently lonely decision to reject an investor’s multi-million dollar offer. This is reported by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others.
Eliasch, head of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation FIS since 2021, received an offer on November 30th from CVC, one of the largest private equity companies in the world: 400 million euros for 20 percent of the shares in a company, in which the winter sports associations jointly held 80 percent. The goal: The joint and central marketing of, among other things, media and sponsorship rights.
CVC proposed paying 375 million euros in advance and then starting its marketing machine. The company assured the FIS and the national associations full control over “sporting and regulatory decisions”. With a similar strategy, the distributions to the teams in Formula 1 were quadrupled from 2006 to 2017, claimed CVC.
Straßer also signs the letter
As the SZ reports, Eliasch rejected the offer in an email to CVC on December 2nd. On December 6th, the 62-year-old, whose own controversial concept for central marketing has been sued by the DSV, among others, tried to explain his decision in an email to the members of the FIS Council. The committee immediately protested and Eliasch was asked to negotiate with CVC.
In addition to the signature of the German Council member Franz Steinle, the fire letter also bears the signature of representatives of the powerful associations in Switzerland and Austria. But that’s not all: around three dozen prominent athletes have also signed it, including Shiffrin and Odermatt as well as figureheads such as Lara Gut-Behrami, Federica Brignone, Sofia Goggia, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, and the German slalom rider Linus Straßer.