Following the recent celebration of its one-year anniversary, the Olympic Channel today announced that it has reached cooperation agreements with the Alliance of Independent Recognised Members of Sport (AIMS), and the international governing bodies for fistball, muaythai, polo, powerlifting and tug of war to collaborate on content for the multi-platform global media destination.

The agreements with AIMS, International Fistball Association (IFA), International Federation of Muaythai Amateur (IFMA), Federation of International Polo (FIP), International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) and Tug of War International Federation (TWIF) bring the number of partners who have announced similar agreements with the Olympic Channel to 63.

Federation partners include international sports federations (IFs), recognised federations and organisations, multi-sport organisers and non-recognised federations.

“We are excited to welcome these organisations to the Olympic Channel’s robust family of federation partners,” said Mark Parkman, general manager of the IOC’s global Olympic Channel. “As we look ahead to 2018, we are in a great position to promote all sports and athletes within the Olympic Movement, and help to distribute their content and grow their audiences worldwide.”

In 2017, the Olympic Channel will live stream more than 500 live transmissions across 210 events and 25 sports in coordination with its partners to audiences around the globe. Event coverage to date includes multi-sport events such as The World Games 2017, world championship events in 3×3 basketball, archery, badminton, boxing, canoe, cheerleading, handball, sport climbing, surfing and wrestling, and world cup events for biathlon, canoe, luge, ski jumping, table tennis and track cycling.

In addition to live event streaming, the Olympic Channel works with its federation partners to present event coverage, highlights, magazine shows, news coverage and original programming providing an additional platform to distribute content that are complementary to current broadcast and distribution arrangements.

The Olympic Channel is a multi-platform destination where fans can experience the power of sport and the excitement of the Olympic Games all year round, and is available worldwide via mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and at olympicchannel.com.
„The International Fistball Association is very glad to be the first partner of the Olympic Channel of the non-recognised federations. It is very important for us to cooperate with the Olympic Channel to reach our goals, improve ourselves permanently and enlarge our fistball community. The cooperation is characterized by high quality awareness as well in streaming as in production to present our sport in the program of the Olympic Channel perfectly”, said IFA President Karl Weiss. “IFA is looking forward to broadcast some 2018 Fistball highlight events on the Olympic Channel as the IFA 2018 Fistball Women´s World Championship in Austria in July.”

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About the Olympic Channel
The Olympic Channel is a multi-platform destination where fans can discover, engage and share in the power of sport and the excitement of the Olympic Games all year round. Offering original programming, news, live sports events and highlights, the Olympic Channel provides additional exposure for sports and athletes 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in 11 languages. The Olympic Channel was launched in August 2016 in support of the IOC’s goal, set out in Olympic Agenda 2020, of providing a new way to engage younger generations, fans and new audiences with the Olympic Movement. Founding Partners supporting the Olympic Channel are Worldwide TOP Partners Bridgestone, Toyota and Alibaba. The Olympic Channel is available worldwide via mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and at olympicchannel.com

Social Media
For more information, please follow the Olympic Channel on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, or log on to olympicchannel.com.

The IFA 2018 Men’s and Women’s Masters World Cup – the World Championship for club teams for the age groups 30 and older – is for the first time taking place in Austria. In its last meeting, the IFA Board of Directors awarded Tigers Vöcklabruck of Austria with the organization of the event, the Masters World Cup will be hosted from July 20 to 22, 2018.

Up to 400 female and male players from all over the world will in Summer 2018 compete for the medals in seven age groups at the Masters World Cup. “We are very happy to award the Masters World Cup to Vöcklabruck, an excellent and highly experienced candidate. The Tigers Vöcklabruck convinced with their bid and stand for an excellent quality for both players and spectators”, says IFA President Karl Weiß.

Only last summer the organizers did again an excellent job in hosting the Austrian Bundesliga Final3. Due to its geographical location and excellent infrastructure Vöcklabruck is an ideal host of this event. “Winning the bid to organize the Masters is a big honour for us. We will witness spectacular matches on up to eleven courts. Furthermore, the spectators will be able to enjoy great comfort and excellent catering. The entire region will benefit from this event due to the value added”, says Bernhard Kudernatsch, chair of the Tigers Vöcklabruck organizing team.

After a two-year pause, the Masters World Cup is being hosted again – for the first time ever in the fistball nation Austria. The date of the event was deliberately selected right before the Women’s World Championship in Linz (July 24 – 28). “We wanted to offer all fistball players from around the world the opportunity to first play at the Masters World Cup, and then directly after that participate as fans at the Women’s World Championship. We think that this is in particular an additional initiative for players from overseas to travel to Austria”, says Peter Hinterholzer, chair of the IFA Sport for All Commission.

IFA confirmed the qualified and registered club teams for the inaugural IFA 2018 Fistball Men’s and Women’s World Tour Finals as following:

Women
Clube Duque de Caxias (BRA) – CC
TSV Dennach (GER) – CC
SG Novo Hamburgo (BRA) – WT
Sogipa (BRA) – WT
TSV Calw (GER) – WT
TSV Jona (SUI) – WT
Union Haidlmair Schwingenschuh Nußbach (AUT) – WT
VfL Kellinghusen (GER) – WT

Men
Condor / FMD (BRA) – CC
Swim and Sport Club / SSC (USA) – CC
TSV Pfungstadt (GER) – CC
SG Novo Hamburgo (BRA) – WT
STV Wigoltingen (SUI) – WT
SVD Diepoldsau-Schmitter (SUI) – WT
TSV Jona (SUI) – WT
TV Vaihingen an der Enz 1861 e.V. (GER) – WT

CC … Continental Champion; WT … qualified via IFA 2017 Fistball World Tour Ranking presented by Sportastic

Overview:
Overall: clubs from 5 countries and 3 continents
Women: clubs from 4 countries and 2 continents – 3x BRA, 3x GER, 1x AUT, 1x SUI
Men: clubs from 4 countries and 3 continents – 3x SUI, 2x BRA, 2x GER, 1x USA
Women´s and Men´s division: TSV Jona (SUI) and SG Novo Hamburgo (BRA)

The Organizer of the IFA 2018 Fistball Men’s and Women’s World Tour Final is the International Fistball Association (IFA) in cooperation with the TV Vaihingen/Enz e.V.

More than 100 registered club teams and 20 hosts from 5 continents prove that the IFA Fistball World Tour was a success story that surpassed all our expectations.
Pretty much motivation therefore to offer a slightly adopted version to the fistball community for 2018.

Hosts can register their tournaments from now on until 15 December 2017 by using the following link: REGISTRATION HOSTING IFA WORLD TOUR TOURNAMENT.
The slightly adopted qualtity criteria for the tournament categories in 2018 can also be found there or as Download here.

Right after this process a full list of tournaments will be published at the beginning of the year 2018.
From then on the club teams can register for 2018’s edition of the fistball world tour.

We are really glad that the first edition of our World Tour encountered that much worldwide interest within the fistball community.
We are looking forward to a further development in 2018.

In a Skype meeting Bob Feid, President of USFA and the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the IFA 2018 Fistball U18 World Championships in Roxbury, New Jersey updated IFA Secretary Jörn Verleger, IFA Administrative Director Christoph Oberlehner and Uwe Schneider, Chair of the IFA Youth Commission on the preparation of the upcoming event.

Recently USFA published the official logo and started promotion activities for the event to be held in Roxbury, New Jersey from July 11th to 15th 2018. Currently IFA and the LOC expect 8 – 10 teams to participate in each men´s and women´s division.

It was agreed to send out the next official Bulletin Middle of January including a list of the participating member federations, the official balls and the procedure how the schedule is drafted.

End of February/beginning of March Bulletin 2 will be published in the final schedule and information concerning the team nomination with a long list and the deadline for a short list as well of Anti-Doping information.

Bulletin 3, which is foreseen to be send out end of May/beginning of June will include information concerning the training schedule, catering, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies.

As the team registration deadline on 30th November 2017 is coming closer IFA reminds all member federations to register teams.

The IFA 2018 Fistball U18 World Championships will take place at Horseshoe Lake Park.

Two years ago, the current IFA Board of Directors was elected in Cordoba (Argentina). This was followed by extensive amendments to the IFA Statutes, which also led to a replacement of the IFA bodies in order to better prepare the association for the upcoming IOC recognition tasks and the IOC Agenda 2020.
President Karl Weiss, who has headed the association since 2011, has been assisting a younger management team since then, which also integrates external experts into the association’s work. In addition, the Board became more female. Four out of eleven members are women.

The success of the first two years, the mid-term review so to speak, is clearly positive, even though the team still faces many challenges on the way to recognition by the IOC.
The further professionalization was accompanied by the move of the IFA office to Linz and the appointment of a full-time Administrative Director. Thanks to the financial support of the Federal Ministry for Defense and Sport of the Republic of Austria, the first full-time employee of IFA has been working with Christoph Oberlehner since the beginning of 2017. This serves in particular to expand the service function of the IFA towards its member federations.

In the Upper Austrian capital of Linz, where the IFA 2017 Fistball Women’s World Championships will take place, the IFA Office space will be divided with the Upper Austrian Fistball Federation and the High Performance Center of the Austrian Fistball Federation.

There is also a spirit of optimism in many member nations. The number of IFA member associations has now grown to 56 nations. The worldwide distribution of Fistball will in future be actively promoted also by the 2017 established IFA Fistball Academy, which will start working in 2018.
Following the successful IFA 2016 Fistball U18 World Championships in Nuremberg, the first World Cup in South Africa and the challenging IFA 2016 Fistball Women’s World Championships in Brazil, in 2017 the inaugural IFA Fistball World Tour was established with more than 100 clubs participating at 20 tournaments on all 5 continents.

However, the highlight of 2017 was The World Games 2017 in Wroclaw (Poland).
The thrilling Fistball final where Germany played Switzerland not only captivated the spectators in the stadium. The transmission of the final reached an audience of some 300,000 viewers watching on German TV Channel SPORT1. The market share of SPORT1 was at a strong 3.0% in the target group of men from 14 to 49 years (M14-49). This is the best figure during all days of the SPORT1 TV coverage of The World Games 2017.
Currently, the IFA Board is in contract negotiations with SPORT1 for the transmission of further fistball events in the coming year. The Olympic Channel has also become aware of the sport of fistball and we hope to establish a presence on this IOC Channel in 2018. In October, an IFA delegation took part in consultations in Madrid.

The new IFA-OTT-Video-Platform, which was presented with the Opening of The World Games 2017, also achieved outstanding figures. In the future, the platform, which is available to all national associations and clubs for the transmission of fistball events, will be further expanded.

Faustball has a real chance to be presented on Free-TV in the upcoming year. In 2018 we have top events in the German-speaking countries with the inaugural IFA World Tour Finals in Vaihingen (Germany) in April, the IFA 2018 Fistball Women’s World Championships in Linz (Austria) in July and the Men’s European Championship 2018 in Adelmannsfelden (Germany).

However, this development must be accompanied by further commercialization of sponsoring. Without additional partners, IFA could not make that step.

In addition, IFA is committed to Sustainability at all its events. In addition to the adoption of an IFA Policy of Sustainability by the IFA Board of Directors, cooperation with external partners has been agreed. The appointment of Sustainability Ambassadors is a visible sign of taking responsibility for our future generations.

IFA would like to thank all the members and friends of the Fistball Familiy who contributed to this success.

The US Fistball Association (USFA) published today the logo of the IFA 2018 Fistball U18 Men´s and Women´s World Championships to be held in Roxbury, New Jersey from July 11th to 15th 2018.

The IFA award was the result of the USFA’s concentrated, coordinated, and committed efforts over the past several years to introduce, train, and form men’s, women’s, boys, and girls Fistball teams to compete in national and international Fistball competitions.

Historically, organized and competitive Fistball has been played in sport clubs in New Jersey, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania for close to 90 years. The recent ground swell of interested High School athletes and steady growth with the youth teams brings renewed momentum and hopes for a bright Fistball future for upcoming national and international competitions.

WFDF and IFA sign Memorandum of Understanding joining forces to improve Sustainability
The World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) and the International Fistball Association (IFA) are pleased to announce that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Sustainability on the occasion of the 2017 SportAccord IF Forum in Lausanne (SUI), promoting the topic of Sustainability in the Olympic Movement.

A joint sustainability strategy was unveiled in the collaboration between the two partners, who presented their case study developed with the IOC during the International Federations Forum last week in Lausanne – where sustainability was the central theme.

WFDF and IFA will collaborate under three principal initiatives. These are: “committing to sustainability as part of their governance,” “providing resources for the development and implementation of a sustainability strategy,” and “conducting sustainability at all events.”

The MoU was signed between WFDF Executive Director Volker Bernardi and IFA President Karl Weiss, with WFDF Advisory Council chair Vincent Gaillard and IFA Secretary General Jörn Verleger in attendance.

“WFDF is pleased to establish this cooperation agreement with IFA on sustainability, building upon consultations with them on anti-doping, ethics and governance, or para-sport activities,” commented WFDF President Robert “Nob” Rauch on the occasion of the signing of the MoU. “This project is very special, not only to WFDF but to our member associations benefiting from the work we are doing on sustainability as their IF. It is about teaming up to leverage the limited resources we have to do a better job on this important matter, and ensuring that our partners and stakeholders do the same, because together we can make a difference.”

“It is more effective if smaller Federations such as ourselves work together to achieve these common goals,” stated WFDF Executive Director Volker Bernardi. “This shows how much we can do. We have targeted Sustainability altogether because it is a main pillar of the Olympic Agenda 2020.”

“The signing of the MoU underlines our long-term cooperation with WFDF. We are sure that, particularly for AIMS and ARISF member Federations, such cooperation can be quite helpful in fulfilling our commitment to stage sustainable world events,” stated IFA President Karl Weiss, who is also member of the AIMS Council.

“The key factor is that we realized that the challenges for our two federations are materially the same: both team sports are mainly played outdoors; both are fast-growing and with a great youth appeal; both are developing well and on the move for their next step in the Olympic Movement; both are considering corporate responsibility and Sustainability as a key element of all events,” stated IFA Secretary General Jörn Verleger.

In showing their respective commitment, WFDF is represented by Sustainability Officer Johanna von Toggenburg, and the IFA has appointed Sustainability Ambassadors Ines Mayer and Patrick Thomas.  Von Toggenburg added: “Several ways to improve sustainability at competitions were recently tested by WFDF at our World Championships of Beach Ultimate (WCBU) held in Royan, France, in June this year. This included environmental measures like the use of reusable cups, plates and cutlery for athletes — reducing waste by more than 50% — as well as making available bicycles for athletes and volunteers for local transportation. Educational activities were also provided for the local community, adding up to the integrated event approach for WFDF, and followed up with an event assessment as per recognized international standards.”

The IOC recognized the “Teaming up for Sustainability” of IFA and WFDF with a case study that was presented within the framework of the IF Forum.

IFA was represented by President Karl Weiss, Secretary General Jörn Verleger and Administrative Director Christoph Oberlehner.

The International Fistball Association is pleased to announce that its Board of Directors have appointed Ines Mayer from Austria and Patrick Thomas from Germany as the first ever IFA Sustainability Ambassadors.

“The appointment of Ines Mayer and Patrick Thomas as our first ever Sustainability Ambassadors marks another important step in fulfilling our commitment to stage sustainable world events,” stated IFA President Karl Weiss.

Ines, who chairs also the IFA Athletes´ Commission, holds a master degree in Sport Science and will also be member of the Organizing Committee responsible for Sustainability of the IFA 2018 Fistball Women´s World Championships in Austria.

Patrick is becoming an engineer for construction and real estate management focused on environmental issues.

“We will now be better equipped to communicate our sustainability efforts e.g. the evaluation tools like the Sustainable Sport Event Toolkit provided by our partner AISTS,” stated IFA Secretary General Jörn Verleger

“I would like to thank the IFA Board of Directors for entrusting me with the role as IFA Sustainability Ambassador,” commented Ines Mayer on her appointment. “I am excited about combining my profes-sion and passion in order to mainstream sustainable practices into all aspects of Fistball worldwide,” stated Patrick Thomas.

Both players are members of their respective national teams and participated in several Fistball European and World Championships as well as The World Games.

In the upcoming week this year’s IF Forum will take place in Lausanne with the theme being INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION IMPACT – Leading the way towards a Sustainable Agenda. IFA will be represented by President Karl Weiss, Secretary General Jörn Verleger and Administrative Director Christoph Oberlehner.

Further information.

On Friday, 27 April and Saturday, 28 April 2018 the inaugural edition of the IFA Fistball World Tour Finals will be carried out in Vaihingen/Enz, Germany. The IFA Fistball World Tour Finals replace and restructure the former IFA Fistball World Cup played this weekend in Curitiba (Brazil). The last edition of an IFA 2017 Fistball World Cup was won by Duque de Caxias (women´s competition) and Sogipa Proto Alegre (men´s competition).

Following the recent IFA Board of Directors’ meeting, the second to last IFA 2017 Fistball World Tour event in Australia and the successful IFA 2017 World Cup in Curitiba (BRA) played this weekend, the International Fistball Association (IFA) is pleased to announce that the inaugural IFA Fistball World Tour Finals will be played in Vaihingen/Enz dated Friday, 27 April and Saturday, 28 April 2018.
Within the framework of the annual Vaihingen Fistball Spring Tournament, a central part of the IFA Fist-ball World Tour, the best eight teams will take part in both, the men’s and women’s competition. There is still one tournament within the IFA Fistball World Tour 2017 series which might change the ranking but TSV Jona (women´s competition) and STV Wigoltingen (men´s competition) are currently in the lead of the IFA 2017 Fistball World Tour ranking presented by Sportastic

“I am thrilled with the inaugural edition of the IFA Fistball World Tour Finals hosted by TV Vaihingen/Enz in Germany. We will see the best eight men’s and women’s teams qualified as Continental Champions or through the World Tour as a worldwide series of fistball tournaments in various categories. Each of the participating 100 teams had the chance to qualify for this event. It is obvious that our sport keeps growing, evolving and exploring new territories. I am definitely sure we will deliver an excellent season highlight“, said Winfried Kronsteiner, chair of the International Fistball Association’s (IFA) Sports Commission and initiator of the World Tour.

All teams qualified for the IFA 2018 Fistball World Tour Finals not reaching the bronze or gold medal match dated on Saturday will get the chanceto take part at the Vaihingen Spring Tournament which also 2018 will be an World Tour event and held on Saturday and Sunday. Teams playing in the Finals on Saturday will get a wild card for the tournament on Sunday. So all teams are able to collect points for next year’s World Tour ranking as well.

Overall, more than 100 women’s and men’s teams from 13 nations and five continents participated in the IFA Fistball World Tour. In total, there will be 20 tournaments on five continents with one tournament still on the calender for this year.