The new president inherits a divided federation, an unfinished commercial transformation and a problem that barely features on the balance sheets: competitive skiing needs resources, compelling stories and recognisable athletes to regain its relevance.
In alpine skiing, a hundredth of a second can mean the difference between gold and silver. In Belgrade, a single vote separated two different visions for the future of winter sports.
Alexander Ospelt was elected president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation on 11 June 2026. He was elected president of the FIS by 65 votes to the 64 obtained by Johan Eliasch. A fully valid victory, but a politically fragile one. The result hands the presidency to Ospelt, although it can hardly be interpreted as an unassailable mandate.
“The FIS has been split in two”
The Liechtenstein leader himself acknowledged this during his first appearance. His priority, he explained, will be to restore unity, to listen to the national federations and to rebuild a shared sense of purpose. This is no mere formality. It is probably the most pressing issue he will have to resolve.
Ospelt is not taking over a static organisation, but rather a federation that has undergone profound change since 2021. Nor is he succeeding a president who can be summed up solely by his mistakes. Johan Eliasch drove through reforms that for years had seemed impossible: the centralisation of audiovisual rights, the development of digital platforms, the in-house management of marketing, the integration of the Freeride World Tour led by its CEO Nicolas Hale-Woods and a far more ambitious commercial focus.
The problem wasn’t just what he wanted to do. The problem was how he went about it, who he worked with and to what extent he managed to make the federations, athletes and other stakeholders feel involved in that transformation.
The choice of Belgrade was not, therefore, a rejection of change. It was a warning about how to go about it.
Five candidates, two projects and a FIS split in two
The election process had begun with five candidates: Johan Eliasch, Alexander Ospelt, Anna Harboe Falkenberg, Victoria Gosling and Dexter Paine. The withdrawals of Falkenberg, Paine and Gosling ultimately reduced the contest to a head-to-head contest between Eliasch and Ospelt.
It is not possible to determine with certainty how each federation voted. The vote was secret, and national associations are allocated one, two or three votes depending on the criteria set out in the FIS statutes.
We are, however, aware of some public statements. Ski Austria expressly supported Ospelt’s candidacy and, following the election, attributed the result to a loss of confidence in Eliasch and his failure to sufficiently involve the national federations in his ideas. And on this point, it would be a mistake to oversimplify.
“The difference between the two candidates was not as simple as modernity versus tradition.”
Eliasch advocated for rapid, centralised transformation led by the presidency. His election manifesto called for the creation of FIS TV, the new app, the expansion of digital channels, the recruitment of new sponsors and the consolidation of international broadcasting rights. It also highlighted significant increases in social media reach and engagement, although these figures were taken from his own campaign report.
Ospelt, for his part, did not propose reversing this trend. His programme, under the slogan Building Bridges, also addresses digitalisation, audience insights, engaging formats, sponsors, media and new audiences. The difference lay in the approach: more dialogue, a better balance between large and small federations, a clear division of responsibilities and governance based on trust.
The new president has not been elected to return to the past. He has been elected to ensure that modernisation is inclusive, and we believe this distinction will prove decisive.
Finance: legitimate questions without resorting to scaremongering
The financial situation was one of the key factors shaping the campaign. The consolidated and audited accounts for 2025 paint a complex picture. The FIS generated revenue of 131.3 million Swiss francs and recorded an operating profit of approximately 7.1 million. Before contributions to the national federations, the result was also positive, at around 4.7 million.
However, the organisation allocated more than 30.2 million francs to grants, awards and support programmes linked to national associations. After these contributions, the release of funds and taxes, the financial year ended with a loss of around 16.5 million. Net assets fell from 84.8 million to 68.7 million between the end of 2024 and the end of 2025.
These figures do not, by any means, suggest that the FIS was facing insolvency issues. Nor do they justify ignoring the questions raised by various federations regarding the use of reserves, investment priorities and the expected return on projects.
A sports organisation may decide to use its resources to accelerate a transformation, support its members or develop new assets. But it must explain that strategy clearly, especially when there is such a stark divide between those who believe the organisation is investing to grow and those who believe it is spending without sufficient oversight.
Ospelt will need to provide a clear financial overview: how much money is actually committed, which investments are generating value, what future obligations exist, and what level of reserves the federation needs to maintain.
Transparency is not just about publishing audited accounts. It also requires explaining the decisions behind them.
Eliasch grasped a key aspect of the problem
It would be unfair to deny that Johan Eliasch correctly identified one of the main challenges facing modern skiing: the sport can no longer be managed simply as a collection of races, calendars and regulations.
The audience has changed. Attention spans are fragmented, and younger generations consume content across platforms, short videos, podcasts, social media and personalised formats. The FIS could not afford to remain on the sidelines of this transformation.
Back in June 2025, when analysing the FIS Congress reforms on sport, safety and sustainability, we at I Love Ski pointed out that the future of skiing would also depend on its ability to adapt to new forms of digital and emotional consumption.
Months later, the agreement between the FIS and Ski Austria regarding international rights confirmed that centralisation could facilitate the creation of a more coherent, recognisable and marketable media product. That project should not be abandoned simply because it is associated with the previous phase.
Centralising rights can improve distribution, facilitate international agreements, increase the commercial value of competitions and enable a common digital strategy. The creation of FIS TV, new audiovisual formats and a content-sharing platform for federations and athletes were also steps in the right direction.
There is a fundamental difference between distributing content and generating interest.
The FIS has done a great deal of work on the first issue. Ospelt will need to look more closely at the second. The problem that doesn’t show up on the balance sheets: who will organise the competition?
During his first appearance, Alexander Ospelt made a statement that should become one of the cornerstones of his presidency:
“Alpine skiing needs to find the right TV format, give athletes greater visibility and turn them into stars”
Its manifesto also acknowledges that the diversity of disciplines means it is necessary to explain formats and rules and to tell the stories of many different athletes. It adds a particularly pertinent statement: snow sports thrive thanks to the passion of their fans and the support of the media. The question we ask ourselves is whether the FIS is prepared to take that idea to its logical conclusion.
Competitive skiing delivers results, spectacular images and extraordinary athletes. What it doesn’t always have is a publishing ecosystem robust enough to turn all of this into a coherent and ongoing narrative. Broadcasts show who wins. The media help explain why that victory matters.
“A fan doesn’t get emotionally attached to a league table.”
It might be linked to a person, a rivalry, a comeback, an injury overcome, a season built with patience, or a career that threatens to end prematurely.
Athletes don’t become role models simply because they step onto the podium. They become role models when someone tells their story repeatedly, coherently and in an accessible way.
This highlights one of the major contradictions of the system: the FIS claims it needs the media, but vertical or ski-specialist media outlets – and at I Love Ski we include ourselves in this observation – are devoting fewer and fewer resources, time and editorial space to competition.
It’s not a lack of passion. There are structural reasons.
“The competition is expensive to run and difficult to make profitable”
It would be easy to call for more coverage without acknowledging the financial realities faced by specialist publications. At I Love Ski, we too must engage in this self-criticism.
Covering a World Cup properly isn’t just about reporting the results. It requires an understanding of the sport, following the season, reading the timing, keeping in touch with athletes and teams, reacting quickly and, where possible, travelling to the venue.
On-site coverage involves travel, accommodation, press passes, long working hours and specialist staff. Even when working remotely, covering multiple disciplines every weekend requires considerable editorial capacity. The return, however, is often limited, if not negative in many cases.
News about the results of a race loses much of its value within a few hours. It competes with the official FIS website, television channels, national federations, athletes’ social media accounts and numerous platforms that publish results almost in real time.
For an independent media outlet, winning that race is difficult and rarely profitable.
An article about a race, a gear guide or practical content can continue to attract visitors for months or even years, and there is usually financial backing to make this possible. A report on a race held on Saturday may be superseded on Sunday by the next race. Furthermore, the emergence of artificial intelligence poses a new threat to vertical media. Results and basic summaries can be processed, translated and published automatically in a matter of seconds by federations, platforms, search engines and generative tools.
When users can access the rankings, a summary of the event or updates on the World Cup without visiting a media outlet’s website, this further reduces the traffic available to fund editorial work. And if the federations themselves use AI to generate more content on their own channels, the competition for an already limited audience becomes even more uneven.
The risk is clear: specialist media outlets miss out on breaking news, yet they continue to bear the cost of analysis, fact-checking, interviews, travel and the development of their own narratives.
Nor do advertisers necessarily fund sports coverage
There is also a mismatch between the importance the sector attaches to competition and the way in which it allocates its communications budgets.
Brands invest in rights, team sponsorship, race numbers, events, ambassadors and athletes. The host resorts allocate significant resources to the production of the competition, logistics, television coverage and local promotion.
However, very little, if any, of that investment reaches independent media outlets that could explain the sport, put it into context and raise its profile beyond the broadcast itself.
The specialist media tend to find greater commercial support for covering destinations, equipment, tourism, technology or experiences than for following a single competition, let alone an entire sporting season.
This reality shapes editorial decisions. A small newsroom cannot devote weeks of work to content that attracts neither a large enough audience nor a viable business model to sustain it.
Supporting specialist media outlets should not mean buying into a favourable editorial line or turning them into institutional mouthpieces. It should mean creating the conditions for them to practise independent, rigorous and specialised journalism covering the competition.
A skiing audience is not automatically a competition audience
Another common misconception is to think that all skiers are keen on racing. The age-old dilemma of how the tourism sector and the competitive sector should coexist and support one another.
A significant proportion of the audience for a snow sports publication is looking for information on skiing: resorts, conditions, trips, equipment, safety, accommodation or experiences. They enjoy the sport, but are not necessarily familiar with the World Cup calendar, the differences between disciplines or the names of the top-ranked athletes.
In some countries, such as Austria, Switzerland and Norway, the sport is part of popular culture and boasts well-known figures. In other markets, interest depends on the occasional emergence of a national athlete capable of attracting mainstream attention. For example, in Spain, the argument is often made that ‘there is no skiing culture’. But sporting culture does not arise spontaneously: it is built on role models, narratives, visibility and continuity.
‘Perhaps it isn’t a lack of a skiing culture. Perhaps what is lacking are years of investment, visible role models and stories capable of fostering it.’
This leads to enormous fragmentation. A race can be a major event in one country and go almost unnoticed in another.
The FIS brings together disciplines with very different audiences, codes and geographical locations. A fan of ski jumping is not necessarily the same person who follows freestyle snowboarding, cross-country skiing, freeriding or alpine skiing. There is no single product called ‘snow sports’. There are distinct sporting cultures that require specific editorial strategies.
Ospelt seems to have grasped this when he suggests taking each discipline to wherever there is a potential audience and making use of local figures to develop markets. But it will not be enough simply to organise competitions in China, the Americas or any other new region.
Without local commentators, specialist media and well-known athletes, an international event can arrive, take place and disappear without leaving a lasting impact on the local community.
Rights protect the product, but they can also limit its distribution
Video is now essential for covering sport, particularly on social media. However, footage of competitions is subject to broadcasting rights and terms of use that are not always straightforward or financially viable for smaller media outlets.
There is extensive professional photographic coverage. The FIS itself designates Agence Zoom as its official photography partner for the World Cup and directs interested media outlets directly to the agencies covering the circuit. Its accreditation guidelines also give priority to major international agencies such as AP, Reuters, AFP and Getty Images.
As stated in the official FIS guide to covering the World Cup:
“Even recording footage for social media requires the acquisition of rights and the necessary authorisation.”
The problem, therefore, is not a lack of good photographs. They do exist, and many of them are extraordinary. The difficulty lies in gaining editorial access: finding the right material, requesting it, understanding the exact terms of publication, navigating the red tape, and covering the cost of a professional licence.
The restriction is significant. Images acquired for personal use may not be reused in the media, magazines, promotional publications or content linked to sponsors or suppliers. Any editorial use must be negotiated directly with the agency.
For a vertical media outlet, repeatedly investing in photographs without any reasonable expectation of a financial return ultimately becomes a leap of faith:
“The cost is borne out of a commitment to sport, whilst the sporting ecosystem itself contributes little to supporting those who make it happen.”
For a major media outlet or an international agency, these procedures are part of their day-to-day operations. For a niche publication with a small team that has to produce several issues every weekend, the cumulative cost can become a real barrier.
The content-sharing platform developed during the Eliasch era represented a step forward, but the former president’s own programme primarily highlighted its usefulness for national federations and athletes.
Specialist media outlets also need clear, fast and reliable access to photographs, video clips, data, statements and reusable content. Without authorised images, it is extremely difficult to produce engaging content on digital platforms that increasingly prioritise video and visual storytelling.
Here we encounter another paradox: competitive skiing produces some of the most spectacular images in world sport, but some of the media outlets closest to its audience do not always have the necessary resources to make use of them. Here we encounter yet another paradox.
Sport needs its most spectacular moments to be shared in order to grow, but it also needs to protect the value of its broadcasting rights, which are one of its main sources of income.
The solution does not lie in indiscriminately making all content freely available. It lies in designing licences, release windows and formats that enable specialist media to boost competition without harming broadcasters.
A short clip included in an editorial review is no substitute for a full broadcast. It might, in fact, be just what persuades a new fan to watch it.
The vicious circle of invisibility
All these factors end up feeding into one another. The media do not cover the competition sufficiently because the audience is limited and the financial return is insufficient. The audience does not grow because it barely knows the athletes, does not understand some disciplines and cannot find stories to follow. Athletes remain largely unrecognisable, which reduces their value to sponsors. With less sponsorship and lower profile, the media find even fewer reasons to invest.
And everything suggests that it’s a vicious circle, and it wouldn’t be fair to say that nobody is interested in ski racing. There are markets where it continues to attract large audiences and events with an extraordinary ability to draw crowds. Perhaps the issue is something else:
“Outside those territories, the system has neither invested in nor created enough incentives to spark public interest.”
A league table doesn’t build a fanbase on its own. Nor does a results bulletin. A fanbase is built by identifying heroes and key players, explaining what’s at stake, and keeping the story alive between one race and the next.
An opportunity for the new FIS
Alexander Ospelt could turn this issue into one of the most innovative reforms of his tenure. The FIS needs a genuine strategy for engaging with the specialist media, distinct from negotiations with major television networks and rights distributors.
This strategy should provide audiovisual material with clear terms and conditions, up-to-date photo libraries, comprehensive athlete profiles, easy-to-understand data, explanations of competition formats, remote interviews and regular meetings with specialist journalists.
It would also be sensible to explore transparent mechanisms to support publishing in emerging markets. Not to dictate the content, but to help cover the costs of travel, translation or producing in-depth features.
Other sectors have long understood that developing a market requires investing in the people who drive it. The snow sports industry should not assume that attention will materialise spontaneously.
The FIS will also need to work with editorial calendars, not just sporting ones. This involves highlighting rivalries ahead of the season, following young talents, explaining changes to equipment, showcasing physical preparation and bringing the human side of the athletes to the fore.
The mainstream media can take the lead on this, but they should not monopolise it.
An ecosystem consisting solely of official channels runs the risk of speaking mainly to those who are already convinced. In recent years, many national federations have strengthened their own websites, apps and social media platforms to take direct control of the competition narrative. The RFEDI, for example, has its own news platform through which it provides updates on the national teams, results, competitions and the progress of its athletes.
It is not a problem for a federation to produce its own content. On the contrary: it has a responsibility to provide information, release official data and raise the profile of its athletes.
“The mistake lies in assuming that this channel can replace the media landscape that exists outside the institution.”
A federation speaks legitimately on the basis of its objectives, interests and its own agenda. An independent media outlet selects, contextualises, compares, questions and connects that information with audiences who do not necessarily visit the federation’s website. It can also address setbacks, conflicts, strategic decisions or the system’s weaknesses with a degree of detachment that an institutional channel can hardly offer.
Focusing the narrative exclusively on the federation’s own media channels may create a sense of control, but it also confines the competition within an increasingly narrow community. It serves those who are already familiar with the federation, follow its athletes and actively seek out results very well, but the ability to reach new readers is lost, as is the opportunity to foster public debate and gain a foothold in external spaces.
“Federation channels and independent media should not compete with one another or replace one another.”
They fulfil different yet complementary roles. The former provide official information, access and continuity; the latter offer external credibility, diversity of opinion, analysis and access to communities that an institution cannot reach on its own.
It is not enough to create stars from the top down
Ospelt has spoken of turning athletes into stars. The intention is sound, although the concept needs clarifying. Stars are not created solely through marketing campaigns. They need results, personality, consistency, accessibility and a credible narrative.
The federation can provide the venue. Television broadcasters can provide the footage. Sponsors can increase visibility. But it is the journalists, content creators, commentators and media outlets who gradually build the context that enables the public to recognise and admire an athlete.
Lindsey Vonn, Mikaela Shiffrin, Marco Odermatt and Marcel Hirscher are not known solely for their victories. Their fame has been built up over years of television appearances, interviews, features, controversies, injuries, comebacks and personal stories.
The real challenge is not simply to promote those who are already successful. It is to identify and tell, in good time, the stories of those who could become the role models of tomorrow.
Keep the ambition, change the approach
Johan Eliasch’s legacy should neither be discarded nor accepted uncritically. The centralisation of rights, digital development, FIS TV, the integration of freeride and the attempt to generate greater commercial value were necessary responses to real problems.
But no transformation can be sustained for long if those responsible for implementing it lose confidence in the leadership.
Alexander Ospelt has won – by the narrowest of margins – by demonstrating a willingness to listen, transparency and balance. He must now prove that these principles can be translated into concrete decisions without dragging the FIS back into the sluggishness of the past.
It will need to sort out its finances, restructure its management, integrate the athletes, safeguard disciplines under threat and maintain commercial momentum.
But it will also have to understand that the value of a competition does not depend solely on the price of its broadcasting rights. It depends on how many people want to watch it, how many names they recognise, and how many stories they find worth following.
To grow the popularity of skiing and snowboarding, the new FIS president will need to win over many more supporters: those of a public that does not yet know its champions, those of a media that cannot bear the cost of covering them on its own, and those of a new generation that will not fall in love with a ranking, but may well do so with a well-told story.
