Jan Mynarik, President of Czech Korfball Association

jan.mynarik said:
Hello Ben!
At first, I totally agree with you and Bandor on the account of better use of modern technologies and social networks.
Fortunately, there is this new Youtube & SportAccord project that should bring concentrated korfball content to internet multimedia (without Youtube 10 minutes limit for normal channels). I also hope that IKF starts soon with Facebook and Twitter ... we use Facebook and like it very much in the Czech Republic.
With that comes the most important thing - a content! With good-quality content we can build a product "korfball". When you have a good "product", you can get fans! To succeed in spreading korfball, we don't have to get only new players and clubs. We can also try to get more fans!
This approach (get fans) is working very well, look at freestyle motocross or Red Bull Air Race. When we have fans, we will also have many people who will want to play korfball as well. We need to create a "hype"!
Ask any korfball player or fan: "What korfball matches would you like to see the most?"
World Championship? European Championship? Europa Cup? Korfball tournament on World Games?
No! I want to go to Rotterdam and see Dutch Korfballeague's finals in Ahoy! Or simply Korfballeague! Does it mean that international tournaments, and korfball there, are bad? No, not at all.
But korfball in Korfballeague is simply better! It is probably the same as NBA is for basketball, NHL for ice-hockey and Premier League for football - it is normal!
And here comes the creation of a good "product". For me as a fan, it would be mix of Dutch Korfballeague together with Belgian finals (and maybe finals of other countries), also final day of World and European Championship and final day of Europa Cup. And Dutch and Belgian leagues are already more or less "products", and that it means less work.

Korfball in most countries is a small sport with very small power (and not enough money) to get korfball regularly to media and especially TV.
We have better chance if we cooperate and create one product that will be on internet and maybe in other international media (Eurosport?). To this strong product with growing audience in participating countries you can local content (finals, league, cup) in a much easier way because korfball will be already somehow established.If we have this product, it should be easily accessible to national associations.
It means prepared for translation, e.g. with subtitles in English. And it also means cheap, we need to get the product for low price. Give the product for free to televisions and many national sport channels will broadcast it.
And once product is in media, you can get sponsors.
In my opinion, IKF should embrace this approach and help with creating such product. There is no reason for IKF being strictly international. We all want to spread korfball and thus we need to show the best korfball!Of course, I would like to discuss this idea with IKF and other countries, I just wrote it here earlier because I think it should be part of this discussion. It is also one of things
I would like to talk about with KNKV and others on Euro TOP4 in Eindhoven, where I am coming together with Czech national team.

Regards!
Jan--
15 januari 2010 16:58