At Monday's Annual General Assembly, Jorgen Lindgren was elected to the Champions Hockey League Board. As well, finances, attendance, television viewership and various marketing ideas were discussed.

by Derek O'Brien

PRAGUE – The shareholders of the Champions Hockey League – representatives from the 26 founding clubs, six founding leagues and the IIHF – gathered in the Czech capital on Monday for their annual General Assembly. The main item on the agenda was the election of a new board member – Swedish Hockey League general manager Jorgen Lindgren, who succeeds Gernot Tripcke of the German DEL.

“We had a discussion within the founding leagues and we decided on a rotating system, so I'm replacing Tripcke.” Lindgren said about the system under which he was elected. “It's an honour for me to become a member of the board and I look forward to working with everybody.”

CHL CEO Martin Baumann reported the financial statement to the shareholders. The first long financial year of the league (2014 and ending in February 2015) closed with an accounting deficit of CHF 73,960. However, this was largely due to market conditions that were out of the league's control.

“The excellent financial result, which really reflects our activity, was marred by an unrealized exchange loss on our Euro funds due to the Swiss National Bank’s leaving of the fixed Euro exchange rate which shook the financial markets in January 2015,” Baumann explained.

As the Champions Hockey League is a Swiss-based company, the accounting must be reported in Swiss francs (CHF).

“If not for this event, which of course was far beyond our control, the Champions Hockey League would have made a profit already in our first year of operation,” Baumann continued.

Baumann also released attendance figures, showing domestic league statistics relative to CHL audiences, and the large variation between the teams. Television numbers were also released. Overall, more than 93 million viewers watched a CHL game this season, with games broadcast in 28 countries and territories, including Brazil and Israel. 

Overall, growth was the message of the meeting. The first year contained a lot of positives, but there is room for improvement. The number of fans must grow, which would mean growth in live attendance, television viewers, and overall revenue. 

“Everything has to grow,” said Andreas Biffiger of Infront Sports & Media, the CHL's promotional arm. “We started here, but eventually everything has to grow bigger.”

In the spirit of growth, ideas for growing the league were discussed among the board and club representatives, which varied from promotional ideas to future changes to the competition format.

“It was a good discussion,” summarized Farjestad Karlstad CEO and general manager Hakan Loob, a Swedish hockey legend who has long been a champion of growing European club hockey. “It's always good to get everyone together to share their ideas. There were a lot of interesting ideas and now we'll all take these back to our different places, discuss them in our clubs and make this thing bigger.”