Now there is a new exciting window for the sport of bandy in one of the countries that may not be the biggest in bandy – Italy! The website is called The Bandymagazine!
The Italian Marco Parmigiani started the website and fills it with articles from the bandy world. It is truly an exciting project. Here on the FIB website, we do not normally market other websites, but this is an exciting initiative in a country that will host the Winter Olympics – Milano Cortina 2026. Winter Olympics that should include bandy on the program, the FIB Olympic Committee works hard for that. Bandy would undeniably show the large audience and TV viewers that there is a ball sport with speed and artistry that will surely create a new interest.
The Federation of International Bandy and many national member federations work hard in the argument that bandy should be an obvious sport in the Winter Olympics. Bandy is the world’s second largest winter sport in terms of number of practitioners and it would probably be one of the cheapest to participate as an Olympic sport. There is already a complete concept of building a temporary art-frozen bandy arena at one of the major football stadiums in Milan at a cost of a few percent compared to what other arenas cost to build and that after the games will stand and decay.
Ice hockey is the largest winter sport with 1.5 million active players. Bandy comes second with about 35,000 practitioners and the third largest winter sport is alpine skiing with about 11,000 practitioners. It is certainly time to get bandy on the ordinary olympic sport programme. Why not in the Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina 2026?
Feel free to read the interesting article written by Chris Middlebrook, President of US Bandy “Is bandy too expensive for the winter olympics?” where he shows what it would cost to let in the bandy in comparison with the gigantic sums the host countries spend on arenas that become useless after the games.