After the successful experiences with Irish and Italian organisations, EPSI makes three and organised a specific webinar for stakeholders in Finland.
Sixty participants attended the EPSI Finnish Webinar, third event organised in few months by the European Platform for Sport Innovation, aimed as sharing experiences at national level with stakeholders coming from the sport ecosystem. The webinar focused on sport business and project opportunities at national and international level, picturing the situation of the sport movement in Finland in the current period.
Sport movement in Finland
The event, chaired by EPSI Executive Directors Alberto Bichi and Rene Wijlens, started with an interesting Key Note Speech by Mika Sulin (CEO Starsquad) focused on Tampere Deck Arena, multi-purposes stadium currently under construction. During his speech, he touched interesting topics like sport events, public-private partnerships, investments and the importance of management of big data for making data-driven decisions.
The speech was followed by a Round Table about the sport movement in Finland, giving voice to different actors of the sport ecosystem, such as public entities representatives and economic operators. The roundtable saw indeed the participation of Ms. Heidi Sulander (Ministry of Education and Culture), Mr. Pentti Malinen (Kainuu Region Mayor), Pekka Hämäläinen (Sport Director Rovaniemi), Mr. Mikko Kerttula, Riku Granat (CEO Varala Sport) and Timo Perälä (Jshercules).
Funding opportunities and best practices at EU and Finnish level
The second part of the event, following the same structure followed in our last online appointment, the Italian Webinar, was about financial opportunities at Finnish and International level, from a public perspective, described respectively by Mike Coyne and Jouni Ponnikas.
The last part was then dedicated to best practices and successful models both in Europe and in Finland. Rene Wijlens told participants about his experience with clusters, mentioning “Cluster Sports&Technology” in the Netherlands and the potential of regional hubs of sport innovation, while Heikki Hannola (Arctic Sport Network) and Juha Kauppinen (CSE) described their expertise in sport innovation, in particular about the development of sport innovation and business in synergy with research, innovation and cooperation with universities.
The speeches were particularly inspirational and that’s why EPSI aims to move concretely towards proactive actions to put into practices the ideas that came out during the webinar, in particular regarding public-private partnerships. “I would like to thank all our speakers – said Alberto Bichi when closing the event -. We are looking forward to further developments: there will be future webinars we would like to organise in future, to make other steps together with you all”.