FINLAND: The Importance of the Private Sport Sector Has Increased in the 2000s

The voluntary sector and the public sector continue to be the main actors in the Finnish sport system; however, in the last decades their importance has declined. Along with the economic downturn, the number of services offered in the public sector has been reduced, and the nature of volunteering has also changed. Voluntary work has received market-based and consumer-like features. Services previously produced by volunteers are currently settled by payments. Owing to changes in the voluntary sector and in the public sector, the importance of the private sector has increased in the 2000s. This article presents first briefly the Finnish sport system and the growth of the private sport sector. The main focus is on the business fields in the sport industry. The framework used is the Finnish equivalent (TOL 2008) of the Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE Rev. 2, 2008). TOL 2008 has ten directly sport-related classes whose economic indicators are presented in the article in aggregate form. A closer look will be taken to the characteristics and to the largest companies of four directly sport-related classes. The selected classes are the two biggest business fields by revenue, namely retail sale of sport equipment and bicycles, as well as wholesale of sport goods, and on the basis of the profitability of the industry’s largest companies, one very profitable business field (fitness facilities) and one poorly profitable business field (activities of sport clubs).