Five financial crashes in Swedish elite sports – see the list in the player above

In SVT Sport's series The Crash of the Elite Clubs, we have examined the reality of elite sports in Sweden. It seems to be tougher than ever to make ends meet.

This has led to 20 clubs, in six different sports, leaving the elite in recent years. Seven of them have also won gold in the Swedish Championships over the past ten years.

"Had a huge impact on sport"

Martin Carlsson Wall, professor at the School of Business, Economics and Law and head of the Sports and Business research centre, explains why.

"Over the past 30-40 years, the forces of commercialisation have had a huge impact on sport. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in the early 90s, TV became very big and it drives some sports. The Premier League and Champions League came into being. We get a sports landscape where the big ones become even bigger winners, and the little ones are marginalized more and more. Then came the pandemic, then global investors, and here many sports may be sitting in a small community in Sweden and wondering what happened," he says.

"There's nothing left"

He believes that the efforts made during the corona pandemic were the last straw.

"There were lots of enthusiasts who made enormous contributions to their clubs. But the feeling I get is that they fought so hard, so there's nothing left," he says.

One solution to the crisis may be to increase skills in offices.

"In all honesty, there is a lot of knowledge that would help. In sports, we fire coaches, we have high demands on players. In the secretariat and the administrative sector, there are not at all the same requirements. If that were to happen, I think Swedish sport would be much better.

On SVT Play you can already see all parts of our series "The Crash of the Elite Clubs".

The professor explains: Why Swedish clubs are going under

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Photo: SVT