Marta Bertolli
Organizing the Italian Ice Sports Federation
The purpose of this analysis is to better understand the environment of the Italian Ice Sports Federation, how it is structured and how it operates in order to gain awareness with the final goal of managing the organization in a more efficient way.
The Italian Ice Sports Federation is a sport organization founded in 1926 in order to promote the practice of ice sports and to coordinate the competitive activity in Italy. Different disciplines are managed: Curling, Figure Skating, Hockey, Stock Sport, Speed Skating and Short Track without forgetting the Paralympic world (Para Ice Hockey and Wheelchair Curling).
The operating structure of the Italian Ice Sports Federation is a mix of:
- Employees (paid staff);
- Consultants (paid staff);
- Board members (volunteers).
Three major problems arise when analysing the actual operating structure of the organization:
- Age – big percentage of employees are close to retirement.
- Deepness – two level structure. No mid‐level management figures.
- Responsibility – lack of employees with macro responsibilities.
A new organizational chart has been proposed with the goal of helping the efficiency of the organization in order to find alternative ways to increase revenues.
Organizing the 2018 Figure Skating World Championships
The International Skating Union (ISU) allocated to the Italian Ice Sports Federation the challenging task to organize the ISU World Figure Skating Championships that will take place in Milano from the 19st to the 25th of March 2018.
The purpose of this case study is to analyse the different stages of the event organization and identify the problematics that can rise in order to deliver to the organizing committee a clear view of the organization process and help to solve the different challenges.
The Italian Ice Sports Federation set two major goals to the Organizing Committee:
- to create a high quality event in order to earn national and international prestige
- to create a profit through the commercial activity that could be reinvested to improve the sport activity of the Italian Ice Sports Federation.
It is assumed that the major problems that the Organizing Committee may face are:
- lack of time in the developing and implementation phase
- ticket sales not matching the forecast
- Cash flow management
In order to reduce the risk of running out of time, every aspect of the organization needs to be planned. Drafting an event risk assessment during the development phase can help mitigate the risk of facing situations that may derail the event or cause a budget overrun. In order to sell a high number of tickets there is the need to increase the awareness of the event by developing an integrated communication strategy.
If the two goals set by the Italian Ice Sports Federation are met, together with the knowledge gained from the organization, the 2018 World Figure Skating Championships will become a landmark to convince the ISU council to allot Italy with more and more international events from Figure Skating, Speed Skating and Short Track. The target is to make event organization one of the possible incomes needed to finance the future sport activities for the Italian Federation.