The Swedish Sportdiving Confederation (SSDF) spent money on cheerleading, go-kart racing and bowling when the national teams had to pay their own way to the 2019 World Championships in Graz.
The latest SSDF Annual Report, which covers two years instead of one, makes special note of a change in the organization’s policy. The auditor’s Note 2 states:
“Under the course of 2019 both a Swedish National Championship and World Championship took place. All the senior athletes, in contrast to previous years, paid for a large part of their costs themselves.” [emphasis added]
Does “large” mean 80 percent, 90 percent or 99 percent? Kumar Thirugnanam, the official auditor, does not elaborate, but that fact that he took the trouble to make note implies that it was a significant policy change.
So, beginning in 2019 the underwater sports federation of Sweden decided not to pay the costs of underwater rugby at senior championships, even when the national teams represented the country. In 2019, a total of 780,000 kronor (75,000 euro) went to cover travel, food and lodging at competitions. Given that the number of freedivers and underwater photographers in competitions is limited, it seems that rugby players and their sponsors came up with hundreds of thousands of kronor when the Federation was unwilling to contribute.
(note: 100 SEK to EUR = 9.61000 Euros)
Is this in anyway formally wrong?
The single largest source of SSDF income is state support in the form of subsidies. In 2019, the total revenue of SSDF was over 5.5 million kronor (530,000 euro), according note 2 of the annual report. A large chunk of this, over 2.2 million kronor, came from state subsidies.
Why was it necessary to stop supporting senior competitions out of subsidy revenue? After all, isn’t some of the Swedish Sport Confederation subsidy actually earmarked for elite competition and national teams?
The Swedish women’s National Team at the 2019 Graz World Championships. Photo: Thomas Denk
Confederation clarification
Peter Eriksson, Controller for approximately 1.8 billion kronor (173 million euro) in state subsidies at the Swedish Sport Confederation, explained that SSDF was fully within its rights to dispose of its subsidy income as it saw fit.
“The federation decides itself what activity to spend the money [from so-called Special Federation funding] on,” he explained. “Most federations use this support for their administration, personnel costs and office rent. But federations can allocate the money as they see fit.”
SSDF, he added, had received a national team subsidy of 50,000 kronor (4,800 euro) in 2019:
“It’s up to the federation to determine exactly where to put the money as long as it goes to the national team area of activity. It could be everything from a training camp, a championship, test activity, compensation to national team coaches, etc.”
In 2019, the Federation also received 25,000 kronor (2,400 euro) to visit a “promising future sports environment” with respect to its underwater rugby women’s national team, according to Eriksson.
In short, the Swedish Sport Confederation only allocates a very small amount of earmarked money for the national teams and there is no obligation to support the senior national teams at international events.
In fact, SSDF did have money for go-kart racing, bowling and cheerleading in 2019. On the 26-27th of September, the members will have a chance to question the Chairman, Board of Directors and Auditor about the accounts. The General Assembly will vote whether or not to accept the economic decisions of SSDF’s leaders during the past two years.
Expulsion of underwater rugby from the Swedish Sportdiving Federation (SSDF) could lead to independent recognition by CMAS.
The relationship between underwater rugby and sport diving is so bad that a leading diving club wants to kick the ball sport out of the federation. As previously reported, at the Swedish Sportdiving Federation (SSDF) general meeting this September the members will vote on a motion to entirely shut down the organization’s involvement in underwater rugby as a sport in Sweden.
Mats Gunnarsson (second from the right middle row) was a member of one of Nåcken, one of Swedish rugby’s top clubs. Photo: Sportdiving Club Näckan
This development would not necessarily affect Swedish rugby’s national teams. CMAS President Anna Arzhanova said that a new Swedish national rugby association could request documents to apply for independent recognition.
“Fill them in, sign them and send them back to headquarters,” she said. “Should you need more information do not hesitate to call me.”
As with many sports the international schedule is up in the air because of the Coronavirus pandemic. The next international competition should be the 2021 European Championships in Stavanger.
The Chairman of SSDF, Henrik Johansson, has advised the members to vote against the motion. However, the club that filed the motion, SDK Näcken, is the home club of Mats Gunnarsson, the Chairman of SSDF’s [scuba] Diving Committee. It is unclear whether Gunnarsson or Johansson will command a majority when it comes to a vote.*
Although a few Swedish rugby players would be happy to set out on an independent course, the majority are anxious not to see their sport lose its official status within SSDF, a member of the Swedish Sport Confederation.
Background to conflict
Along with the motion to eject rugby, Näcken submitted an explanatory document. Näcken Chairman Gunnar Larsson—the author of the background note—observed that acrimony on social media had had a negative impact on relations between rugby and the federation. He briefly described three points of dispute:
The expense of the office in Stockholm;
The lack of reporting on rugby in Sportdykaren, the federation’s glossy print magazine;
The general competence of SSDF’s leadership and administration.
He went on to say that the annual meeting should not engage in a discussion of who has been right or wrong in the conflicts between rugby and the federation leaders. The goal of Näcken’s motion is simply to put an end to an unhappy relationship. The motion does not propose any financial compensation to rugby. Nor is there any scheme to divide assets. One could call Larsson the advocate of a no-fault divorce between two unequal parties.
What on social media offended the divers? The explanatory document does not mention any particular incident or episode. Still, it is easy to find examples. In 2016, when the leaders of SSDF decided to shore up the organization’s shaky finances by introducing an annual 300 kronor (29 euro) competition license for underwater rugby players and freedivers. The income from the license would, the board promised, go entirely to the respective sports committees to use for the purposes they saw fit.
Rugby players and freedivers had never paid more in annual membership fees than scuba divers, so there was understandably reluctance. However, when it came to a vote, divers enjoyed a majority, for only about 6 percent of SSDF’s 6,000 members were rugby players. The proposal could (and would) be passed, regardless what the athletes thought.
Sweden, though, is a consensus based society and confrontation is considered undesirable. Accordingly, SSDF’s leaders made an effort to sell the idea. In August 2016, Gunnarsson introduced himself to the Swedish rugby group on Facebook that is commonly used to communicate what is happening in the country. The Diving Chairman himself had a strong background in rugby. With legitimacy he could and did make a sales pitch from a rugby point of view:
“My name is Mats Gunnarsson. I play [rugby] for Nautic but was rugby schooled in Näcken… I have several Swedish National Championship medals from the golden days with Näcken and now I just play in Division 1 for fun.”
He added that he was also Chairman of SSDF’s technical [diving] committee.
To begin with he noted that diving instructors have paid a license fee for 10 years. Why the instructors license was the equivalent of a competition license he did not elaborate. Importantly, he noted that economic relationship between rugby and diving had wrongly favored rugby.
“As I see it underwater rugby has raked in the gold from SSDF for many years,” argued Mats Gunnarsson, Chairman of the Diving Committee at the Swedish Sportdiving Federation.
He offered two reasons for this. Firstly, underwater rugby had had “clever” and “motivated” lobbyists who had worked in the interests of their sport. He specifically mentioned Kajsa Lindman, who is today the head of the underwater rugby committee.
Secondly, rugby had exploited a myth that without rugby, SSDF would not have qualified for subsidies from the Swedish Sports Confederation, the distributor of hundreds of millions of euro each year. Diving, rugby players were fond of saying, was not a sport. SSDF could only be a member of the confederation thanks to he inclusion of rugby.
A diver had investigated the matter and learned that scuba diving was a legitimate recipient of state funding in its own right. Diving was not at all beholden to rugby. Suddenly, divers realized that paying for Swedish rugby teams to represent the country in international competition had been unnecessary. Resentment over the expense of the team sport became a grievance.
Gunnarsson, who had access to SSDF’s financial information, made assertions about how much money rugby had gotten in the past. The new fee would allow diving to keep more money, compensating diving. The divers’ point of view was new to many rugby players. The majority posting on the thread in reply to Gunnarsson expressed gratitude for his presentation.
Still, his argumentation did not go entirely unchallenged. One rugby player questioned whether it was correct for member of the board to cite budgetary numbers in a Facebook discussion without providing public access to the complete budget figures. Another player pointed out that some subsidies were tied to reported athlete per hour training, a contribution that rugby club practices generate. There are more juniors in rugby than in scuba diving, another factor that increases the subsidies from the Swedish Sport Confederation.
In any case, the license fee was adopted. Ill feeling, though, did not disappear over the next three years. The Stockholm club Polisen has now submitted a motion to scrap the competition fee and work out a new system. SSDF’s Board admitted that he competition license had had created problems and suggested that it that it run the licenses through an online platform provided by the Swedish Sport Confederation. This, too, will come up for a vote in September.
Where the money actually goes
The Näcken note observes that today rugby actually is already largely self financing. It states that Swedish league competition is run almost completely by rugby. The Underwater Rugby Committee plans the schedule of play. The clubs themselves book pool time and pay the rental costs of facilities. The Committee ensures that referees attend. The referees’ travel costs and the league fees are collected by committee. As for the Swedish Championships, the Committee had in the past partially financed the championship, but now the participation fee covers the cost of the Swedish Championships.
“So you can say that league play and Swedish Championships are financed by the clubs themselves,” stated Larsson, implying that rugby would not lose much money from government funding because it did not receive much in any case.
He does not cite a source for the financial information.
SSDF’s annual reports do not separately break down cost and income comparisons for diving, freediving and rugby. This reporter has heard on several occasions that the nitty-gritty working budget details are provided to the chairman of each sport. This shared information is the basis of the internal negotiations on how to divide funding between various competing interests.
In underwater rugby it is the national teams that are the big cost,”
—Mats Gunnarsson Chairman Diving Committee Swedish Sportdiving Federation
It would seem that shedding the national teams to cut costs and labor could be an aim of the motion to expel the sport. But how much the national teams actually receive is not public. At the last World Championships in Graz, Swedish national team players bought their own uniforms. Each player paid 15,000 kronor (1,488 euro) to participate.The fate of the national teams
The explanatory note discusses how the national teams could continue to exist after the expulsion of rugby. Larsson suggests that a new underwater rugby association could be established. The new association would then negotiate an agreement with SSDF to handle the CMAS license provision for the European and World Championships, the only two competitions requiring SSDF approval.
In such a scenario, SSDF would not have to pay anything at all towards national teams and perhaps gain income from the Swedish Sport Confederation elite sport subsidy.
The alternative would be the founding an entirely independent association to join CMAS. There are numerous examples of countries having multiple CMAS memberships. Argentina, for example, has one federation for diving and another for hockey. An independent Swedish underwater rugby organization could pay the federation membership fee but not receive any CMAS voting rights that would infringe SSDF’s rights in other matters. It would only pay for membership in the rugby section, where it would have the right to vote. This would not affect SSDF since the Swedish federation would not have rugby as an activity.
International referees
Sweden has been a key nation when it comes to running underwater rugby as an international sport. Four international referees, including the CMAS Chief Referee, are Swedes. Manuel Tito de Morais, the sport’s chief referee, said that he did not believe he would be eligible to serve if SSDF quit rugby.
“To referee Champions Cup would not be a problem, I think, but the European and World Championships would probably not be allowed as we would not have CMAS association any longer,” said Tito de Morais. “I would probably not be able to stay on as Chief Referee.”
He added that he might try to gain membership through another federation so that he could continue officiating the sport. Founding and administering an independent Swedish rugby association seemed like a great deal of work, according to him.
The sport would have to scramble rugby to salvage its records, both paper and electronic, among other difficulties. There are several unknowns. Could rugby clubs join the Swedish Swimming Federation to restore their connection to the Swedish Sport Confederation? Could the Swedish National Championships retain their legal status?
However, leaving the diving federation might not be a bad thing, according to some.
“I know a number of groups who would love to be in Swedish rugby’s position,” commented Graham Henderson, President of the Australian Underwater Federation
The vote to expel rugby is scheduled for the 27th of September.
* In 2018, he coached the Swedish Women’s National Team at the Nordic Championship in Katrineholm.
The Swedish Sportdiving Federation filed a police complaint this week against individuals suspected of providing the media with information about the Swedish Sportdiving Federation’s financial policy and transactions.
Henrik Johansson, besides heading the Swedish Sportdiving Federation, is the head of the Ambulance Union. Screenshot: SVT/Swedish Public Service television news
The leaked documents disclosed that the Federation financially remunerated both the Chairman and Vice Chairman in 2019. Henrik Johansson, the head of the underwater sports in Sweden, received 83 days of compensation payment between December 2018 and August 2019. The amount totaled 112,500 kronor (10,862 euro). Vice Chairman Annikki Wahlöö received 18,000 kronor (1,738 euro) for 13 days.
Payment of salary or wages to the board members of nonprofits is perfectly legal. In fact, in Sweden there has been a steady trend towards remuneration. However, critics are concerned that this undermines the Swedish tradition of volunteer labor in sport associations. If financial gain becomes too important as a motivator, sports may decline. Physical inactivity is a growing problem in Sweden; the overwhelming majority of sports have been losing participants in recent years.
In 2017, SSDF suffered an operating loss of 440,000 kronor on gross revenue of around 5.4m kronor. It was the second year in a row that the underwater federation was in the red. At the 2018 board meeting in Stockholm, Leandra Caldarulo of Felix Diving Club moved that the board of directors collectively draw up a sound economic development plan. She also requested that the board investigate why the federation had failed to execute its previously agreed upon economic strategy successfully. Her motions were approved.
“No financial compensation goes to those on the Swedish Sportdiving Federation’s Board of Directors,”
—Henrik Johansson, Chairman Swedish Sportdiving Federation, 2016 news brief
Asked to clarify how and when he changed his position, Johansson replied:
“I have worked voluntarily without pay from the federation for 10 years and I continue to do so even now. Those times that someone [on the board] has received compensation for lost income is caused by more time demanding tasks that could not be done on a voluntary basis.”
The position of the Swedish Sport Confederation
Much of SSDF funding comes from the Swedish Sport Confederation. Peter Eriksson, Business Controller at the Confederation said there are no specific guidelines regarding financial compensation to board members. He elaborated:
“Historically very few of our sport federations have given compensation beyond compensating board members for expenses like lodging, meals and other expenses directly attached to the board mission.”
He noted that the Swedish football and ice hockey federations paid the chairmen something similar to a normal wage.
“My view is that the small or middle sized sports and federations seldom have any compensation beyond normal expenses. And in those cases the compensation is most likely shown in the annual report.”
The last published annual report of SSDF (2016 and 2017) does not mention compensation to the board members.
Compliance with the 2018 plan
At the same meeting 6 board members were elected. Subsequently, three of them resigned before their term of office expired. Their departure concentrated financial authority in the hands of Chairman Henrik Johansson and General Secretary Frida Linderoth. This shift in authority from the board to the Chairman and General Secretary has been noted in SSDF’s Annual report 2018-2019. The report, which has been released internally to diving club leaders in pdf format, does not yet provide the financial results.
The organization’s reformed procedures for oversight are outlined in a single paragraph, which can be broken down as follows:
“The expenses of the Federation Chairman are reviewed by the office for final approval by the Financial Committee (ekonomigruppen) at its convention.”
In other words, Johansson informs Linderoth what expenses he expects to spend on behalf of the federation. She grants (or denies) initial approval. When the Financial Committee meets it makes a final determination whether or not to accept the Chairman’s decisions. The paragraph does not discuss how often the Committee meets or who heads it. There is no discussion of procedure in the event of a rejected expenditure.
“The expenses for the Board Members are overseen by the office and subject to approval by the Chairman.”
This seems to contradict the resolution of 2018 to have the Board plan collectively.
“Salaries have been determined by an external financial consultant and approved by the Chairman.”
Thus, some of the most significant costs for running SSDF, employee salaries and the Chairman’s expenditures, are not first hand determined by the Board of Directors collectively, but by the Chairman, General Secretary and outside consultants.
Johansson declined to name the head of the Financial Committee to the media.
“The Federation has an accountant, nominating committee and an annual general meeting of members that oversee the organization and enjoy complete insight,” he said.
The receipts
Johansson used an SSDF Visa Business card. The total charges in 2019 amounted to 129,528 kronor (12,630 euro). He traveled over 30,000km for which he was compensated over 70,000 kronor (6,825 euro) at the standard rate of 18.50kr per 10km. While working for SSDF, Johansson submitted various unremarkable receipts from hotels and restaurants. But there were also receipts that one would expect an auditor to question. For example, there were a few substantial grocery shopping receipts from a local supermarket in his hometown. The three largest together totaled 6,733 kronor (656 euro). Each comprised a wide variety of food products:
Cucumbers Sweden 2
Yeast 50 grams 2
Meatballs 2 x 450 grams
Steakhouse fries 2 x 900 grams
Carraway ground 38 grams
Pearl sugar 500 grams
Smoked reindeer meat and cheese spread
Cinnamon ground 42 grams
Onions
Etc.
When questioned about the purpose of the food purchases, Johansson responded that it was clear the SSDF had suffered a serious breach of confidentiality. Subsequently, the Federation announced that it had filed a police complaint. After that he declined to further discuss financial matters.
In Chairman’s hometown Arne Cronvall, the Vice Chairman of the Örebro Sportdiving Club said that Johansson had indeed provided hotdogs for a “try diving” program to reach underprivileged youth in Örebro. There were grocery receipts with hotdogs that matched such use of federation funds. When pressed for confirmation that the large grocery purchases might have gone to his club, he said that he would check and reply later.
One of the receipts came from an historical reenactment supply store in Örebro. Screeshot: Nidingbane
There were other curious receipts: a payment of 1,435 kronor went to Nidingbane, a historical warfare weapons and clothing store in Örebro.
There was a 644 kronor purchase in serieZonen, a comic bookstore in Uppsala.
Re-election
At the end of September SSDF will convene its bi-annual meeting at which time members will have and opportunity to request explanations from Johansson, regarding his stewardship of underwater sports.
During the past two years Johansson has carried out some important reforms. He successfully introduced an annual competition fee of 300 kronor per athlete. This may have helped to stabilize the federation’s finances, but he was unable to increase the number of clubs by 10, which was the goal the board set.
Some 20 inactive clubs have been removed. The clean up is important to prevent auditing by the Swedish Sport Confederation, which is getting stricter about inflated numbers from its members.
In 2020, the Competitive Freediving Committee has a budget from SSDF of 153,600 kronor, which is an improvement over a turbulent period for freediving during which the Committee was even disbanded.
Has Johansson done enough to win re-election come autumn? CMAS member federations tend to stick with established leaders, regardless of controversies. The challenge to SSDF, like many other sports in Sweden, is to engage youth and keep a larger number of seniors playing rugby, scuba and freediving.
