When I think back to my own career as a player, a lot has changed compared to today.
Fortunately, professionalism has also become more and more important in our sport.

Video Material

It used to be that we couldn’t really prepare for games as well as we can today. Also it wasn’t as easy as today to analyze and improve our own mistakes.
When I think back to my active time as a player, it was already progressive when we had someone in the stands who filmed our games with a bad resolution.
But these recordings are usually only visible for the coach and it wasn’t possible to edit them.
Before the first affordable and reasonable digital cameras came on the market, the games were recorded on VHS.
Whenever it happened that we were allowed to watch such games as a team, we always had to organize a TV and a videotape recorder like in school.
Not only was the quality very limited, but the TVs were usually much smaller. If the coach wanted to show certain game situations, he always had to go back and forth, which always took some time.

Today it is fortunately much easier, the content was in the past mostly analogue, but today digitalization has taken over. Today there are also powerful computers which are offered at a reasonable price, as well as the appropriate video editing software.
This video editing software is available in different price categories from cheap to professional and expensive.

I can remember well, when I was still working as a coach at Piranha Chur in my first years, we used the Windows Media Player to make at least simple cuts.
Recently I revisited an old video from the year 2010 to recall a certain game situation. It was frightening how bad the resolution was just 10 years ago, but on the other hand it’s also very gratifying to see the leap that technology has already made in this area.

The outlook how it goes on is very simple for once. At the moment there are video systems that automatically film from different perspectives and we can watch the game situation that happened a few seconds ago from different angles in real time on a tablet.
Unfortunately, such systems, which are used today especially in the football area are still a bit expensive. But the example of Fallun shows that even we are not that far away from that in floorball.

If a club does not have the budget yet, it is relatively easy to record the game from different angles with different cameras like the GoPro. These affordable cameras offer a resolution of up to 4K. Also, computers are more powerful, video software is affordable and cloud storage is cheap.
Thanks to cloud storage, cut sequences can be made available to your own team easily. This via Microsoft OneDrive, teams, or other providers.

It is also pleasing that useful projectors are available at reasonable prices.

Livestream and TV productions

In the Swiss Men’s NLA League Swissunihockey has built a streaming platform. These teams are obliged to record matches in the live stream. Unfortunately, until today it is only the men’s league. Nevertheless the women NLA teams are obliged to upload the games on the Swiss Unihockey Portal and make them available to the other teams.
In the past it was often the case that when I was an assistant coach it was not uncommon for me to travel around Switzerland and film the games of the other teams when we didn’t have a game, so that the staff could prepare accordingly.

The Czech Association also offers live streaming of the games and as far as I know, games in Sweden have been broadcast on TV for quite some time.
In Switzerland, Swiss Unihockey has entered into a partnership with the Swiss State Television. At the beginning of this cooperation the Superfinal and the Cupfinal of the men and women NLA were shown live on TV.In the meantime, this partnership has been expanded so that one match is always shown live during the men’s playoffs.
There is a rumor that this was only possible because the license prices for the Football Champions League became too expensive. Whether this is the case or not, I don’t really care.
It’s great that the Swiss Unihockey took the chance.
The newly won TV presence helps our sport in many areas. On the one hand, the sport is becoming better known, on the other hand, floorball clubs are becoming more interesting for new sponsoring contracts, because they are shown more often on TV.

However, what I think is a pity is that Floorball in Germany does not yet have the desired status. I see a lot of potential there, as the German market with its 80 million inhabitants and several high class TV stations could be helpful as well.

Social Media

I am very impressed how the online presence of the Czech Association is. Often refreshing contributions across all the teams regardless if men or women. Also here in Switzerland more and more clubs have jumped on this train.
I am also professionally dependent on the social media through my daily work with Microsoft, by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or other portals. These give us the opportunity to show ourselves in a more professional light and to carry our opinions into the world.
As an example, I have built this website and am writing this blog to have a channel. Nobody has to read it, but everybody can.

Media

Every country has its own media landscape. Since I am in Switzerland, I cannot say much about the Swedish, Finnish, etc. But what I can assess are the Swiss media.
Everybody who has something to do with Floorball in Switzerland knows unihockey.ch. You can almost say that unihockey.ch has a monopoly position in Switzerland. But this is not critical in my opinion. Damian, who started the portal Unihockey.ch more than 20 years ago, quickly understood how to write factual and (mostly) neutral content.
This is rounded off with a healthy portion of humor (Event Splitter) and a live ticket. Unihockey.ch today has several well to very well connected authors who generate together with the clubs mostly interesting content.
Besides the online presence of unihockey.ch, a print magazine is produced at regular intervals. This is always interesting to read, especially during the preparation phase.

Unihockey.ch was not always the only really exciting media representative for our sport. For a while there was – especially for women’s floorball – another platform called Ladystrike.com Ladystrike focused on women’s floorball and depending on the event also worked together with Unihockey.ch.
Unfortunately this portal has been discontinued in the meantime.

Visitor Count

Unfortunately, the number of spectators in Switzerland still varies greatly. Depending on the region, league and match pairings, it still happens that there are only a handful of spectators at matches. But there are also games where the number of spectators is way higher.
Here I would like to see more initiative from the clubs, for example the men’s NLA team from Winterthur. Winterthur has a great and big arena. Through season ticket campaigns they can fill the arena regularly.

The teams from the region of Berne have a fundamental leading role model function here. Wiler Ersigen has a fan club known throughout Switzerland, but also the women’s teams of the Skorpions Zollbrück or the Wizards from Burgdorf often have a large audience at their home games.
Basically the clubs should still come up with a frame program for the games.

The Superfinal, Cupfinal or a national team event are completely different. All Superfinal events are (mostly) sold out. In the past years the ice hockey hall in Kloten was rented for the Superfinal day. This has always provided a great atmosphere and a worthy coulisse for the live TV broadcast.