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| Credit: Salibandyliitto |
Floorball is the 3rd most practiced hobby in Finland with 61 000 registered players in 2020. If you add also recreational players the number is 350 000. Despite the high number of the players there are not many professional floorball players in Finland. On December 2021 world cup of Floorball is played in Helsinki and about half of the Finnish national team are professionals according to Helsingin Sanomat. Semi professionals are combining their floorball career with studies or part-time work. For example National team player Eemeli Salin confirmed in an interview of Yle in 2015 that he was earning about 2 000 EUR per month during the season.
One of the biggest Finnish Youtubers Roni Bäck (559 000 subscribers November 2021) plays floorball in the third division. The turnover of his one person company was 337 000 EUR and profit 202 000 EUR. So he is making much better income than the professional floorball players. Another famous floorball player in 3rd divison is radio host Tuukka Ritokoski whose income in 2019 was 44 000 EUR written in IS.fi. He went for a try-out (video) session to 1st division team. After the training session he commented that he did fine technique wise but was exhausted and could see a great difference especially in the physical condition (audio). I believe that there are also many other players in the third division who have well paying jobs and are making more income than the first division floorball players in Finland.
The budget of players in the Finnish first division floorball teams was between 270 000 EUR and 10 000 EUR in 2018 - 2019 according to pelimies.com. In the season 2019 - 2020 average attendance was 605 spectators. So the floorball league is not considered big in financial standards nor by exposure to the large crowds. Peter Vesterbacka who is known from Angry Birds is explaining in the article of Iltalehti how he is planning to help making Finnish floorball league the most valuable floorball league by the year 2028. Part of the plan is to make the league attractive for bigger audience and expand internationally.
