Mid-July usually involves youth invasion in Gothenburg. The Gothia Cup usually draws around 35,000 football players between 11 and 19 years old for the world's largest football cup. This will not be the case in 2020. Today, the decision came that the Gothia Cup will be canceled as an effect of the global corona pandemic.
BK Häcken has since 1975 organized the youth cup and the revenue has meant a lot to the Swedish club. According to Marcus Jodin, club manager at BK Häcken, it is about "significant sums" that the club will lose out on with the canceled tournament.
- The effect will be great, how big I can't speculate, Jodin tells SVT Sport.
But BK Häcken was completely unprepared. After the swine flu spread just over ten years ago, the organizers of the Gothia Cup decided to raise a possible tournament. At first, there were plans for an insurance similar to the tennis tournament Wimbledon had signed, but the election eventually fell on its own fund. BK Häcken has equity of just over SEK 70 million and the Gothia Fund accounts for a large part of it.
- We chose to create our own insurance instead. Because of that, we are not facing any form of bankruptcy threat, but it is clearly going to be an extremely tough reality for us, ”says Marcus Jodin to SVT Sport.