SVT broadcasts, among other things, biathlon but Formula 1 can be found in Viaplay and SHL in TV4, the Grand Slam tournaments in tennis are shown in Max and Conference League in Disney+. There we have a selection of different sports rights and Swedish TV viewers have become accustomed to having different subscriptions.
At the end of the 1980s, the situation was different. Sport was seen at SVT, there was no choice. But times would change.
Ishockeylandslaget Tre Kronor Hade Vnit 1987 I Vienna. 1989 Skule Sverige (Stockholm och Södertälje) Stå Värt för Mästerskapet.
– Then Rickard (Fagerlund, then chairman of the Swedish Ice Hockey Association) calls me all of a sudden and asks if we are interested, says Jan Steinmann.
Steinmann is at that time CEO for the newly started channel TV3 and may have explained that the negotiations between the EBU (European radio and television union where SVT is a member) and the Swiss rights owner Telesport have been stranded.
Fagerlund comes to his attic office with Telesport’s manager Volker Kösters.
– We agree on a price … It’s a clock that calls that there was 5,000 Swiss Francs a year (the agreement was signed in one year with an option for two more years). It was ridiculous money.
– We shake hands and then I call Jan (Stenbeck, the channel’s owner) and say that “I have cracked the budget”. Because we will produce the World Cup as well. “What the hell have you done?” He says. “I have bought the World Cup in ice hockey,” I and he and he cheers at the other end.
We will return to TV3’s problems with producing. Instead, we jump a week ahead, until October 20, 1988.
– It will be a fucking life then, says Jan Steinmann.
TV3 holds a press conference to tell you that the channel has bought the rights for the upcoming hockey World Cup. In SVT’s Sports News in the evening, the program manager Christer Ulfbåge says “Yes, you do not know this day if you want to laugh or cry”.
– We have “taken everything from the Swedish people”. The journalists are in rebellion and are screaming, Steinmann continues.
A look at DN’s archive tells us that it was a “spectacular press conference” but also that SVT distrusts the news.
However, there is only one day Before the validity of TV3’s agreement is confirmed, in Volker Köster’s words that they simply tired of EBU who “played poker for a year”.
The same DN article from October 22 tells how Channel 1 chief Ingvar Bengtsson collapsed during a seminar on satellite TV at the Älvsjö fair that “confidence in the hockey association was embraced” and that S politician John-Olle Persson in an open letter wrote: “For a Juda Cherry, for a Juda.
According to TV3, the channel at this time has a range of 1.2 million viewers in Scandinavia, of which only 480,000 in Sweden.
– I got death threats. A letter with a knife cut out in cardboard in. I think I had Säpo for two days. But it calmed down and now we started selling parabolas instead, says Steinmann.
“Okay, now we take them, now we take them. Okay, now we have them, now we have them.”
That Tre Kronor before a World Cup should not only train but also record a music video and visit the TV program “Stina with Sven”, led by Stina Dabrowski and Sven Melander, is a new experience for the players. But the premiere play will be a viewing success and the song sells gold and tops the Swedish peak for four weeks.
“Hockey. Hockey!” The main sponsor Trygg Hansa wants a signature melody for his World Cup and Håkan Södergren, who, in addition to being a national team player, works as an injury regulator at the insurance company, tells DN how it works when he becomes a pop star.
– I sit in the office and then Lasse Holm calls: “Can’t you come down to me on Hornsgatan, we sit in a studio. I have an idea.” He asks if I can pull any stanzas and talk a little in the mic … so I do.
A couple of weeks later Has the composer let his children’s school classes run and present the result to Södergren who thinks that “that didn’t sound so damn stupid”.
He then does not think that the song should be such a hit and that it should persecute him.
– In every ice rink I come, this song shows up – someone has recognized me or just because it is like a hockey song.
How does it feel then?
– I’m not always so comfortable with it. But there is nothing that I am ashamed of.
The soundtrack is thus a success and on site the World Cup becomes an audience success-the World Cup organization’s budgeted profit of 11 million is struck by rye.
But how are things going for TV viewers-can they see the championship?
We back the band a bit, until the early 80’s.
Financier Jan Stenbeckthe main owner of the Kinnevik Group, decided to challenge the Swedish TV monopoly. He had bought 10 percent in the European satellite Astra.
Jan Steinmann worked on international television at IMG in the United States and received a call from a John Stenbow.
– I heard with the same that it was Jan Stenbeck. We actually had the office next to him so he said “Can’t you come over?”.
Steinmann was commissioned to investigate how to broadcast advertising -financed television in Sweden. The thing is that television advertising directed directly to Swedish households was prohibited.
– I am damn that Jan has never read the investigation. He had just decided.
The solution was To broadcast from London, where Steinmann moved.
What kind of experience did you have in running a TV channel?
-Never did, but I knew advertising TV and no one in Scandinavia could.
New Year’s Eve 1987 started Sweden’s first commercial TV channel TV3.
– We had two advertisers at the premiere. It was Juicy Fruit and Pentax. And we have never been paid so well at any time, recalls the former CEO, which would, however, get it hot on the ears.
– They closed us in Norway after two weeks. In Sweden, it was a fucking life with this Minister of Culture for Palme (Bengt Göransson; ed. Note), but they never tried to shut us down. But in Norway it became hearing in the Storting. It burst that they let English channels go through. So after a week we were up and drove again.
TV3’s business concept Be initially to buy series with as many sections as possible. Producing your own material was not done. So how would the channel be able to send a hockey World Cup?
Steinmann says that the channel was definitely not the mature task, really. But he knew Lennart Jelbe, legendary television producer who quit SVT and become freelance. He is contracted and then negotiations with SVT’s CEO Sam Nilsson start.
The agreement concludes on January 30, 1989, after a seven -hour mangling.
– We came to this that “you run the production and you broadcast 15 minutes after us, then you can join”. And they said yes.
Jan Steinmann laughs. Like he still does not really understand how SVT could agree to the agreement, but the public service company was pressured by public opinion. For TV3 everything was win -win. The Swedish people were appeared and a production cost of millions of kronor was released.
For 23 years, TV3 retained the rights. After a six-year short excursion to TV4 and a few years of co-broadcast with SVT, the ice hockey World Cup since last year is exclusively back in the company that has today developed into Viaplay.
-The Hockey World Cup has a tremendously strong history in our house since the old MTG time when Jan Stenbeck shocked the Swedish people. The World Cup tradition is, so to speak, left in the walls, says sports manager Erik Westberg.
In relation to your other sports rights, how does the hockey World Cup stand today?
Westberg knows that the Swedish people complain: Hockey in May … but also that the audience then sits there on the TV sofas. And that blue -yellow hearts pat for three crowns.
-Throughout our portfolio, the hockey World Cup is one of the big highlights in 2025; Something we prioritize and also want a strong editorial setting around. We will not only focus on the tactical, but we will offer more nostalgia because it is in Avicii Arena, the former Globe. We have a little modern in our lineup of commentators, but also Håkan Södergren who has been involved from the beginning (since 1990).
For TV3 becomes hockey World Cup 1989 a key business.
-Sport has always been very important to put a TV channel on the map.
This is stated by Tobias Lindberg, media researcher at the University of Gothenburg, and compares with SVT’s major impact-the 1958 football World Cup.
-We got regular television broadcasts in 1956. There was no major growth for the first two years, but in front of the Soccer World Cup in Sweden, the proportion that bought television set increased very much.
According to Lindberg, about 6 percent of households had access to TV3 around 1988–89.
-But by buying the rights to the ice hockey World Cup, you became a channel that suddenly everyone knew. DN actually had this on the race: “TV3 buys the ice hockey World Cup.”
Lindberg’s figures tell Why the acquisition was such a big news. In the early 1970s, over 80 percent of Sweden’s population looked at the most important matches, such as Sweden-Soviet, and the World Cup continued to be great in the 1980s.
-I actually checked the proportion of the population that watched the most viewed match during the 1989 Ice Hockey World Cup; 56 percent saw Sweden-Canada, or at least part of the match.
– But most people actually looked via SVT. Despite 15 minutes delay.
Jan Steinmann has no exact figures available now in his retirement existence.
– But in 1990 we probably reached 1.5–2 million households. It went very fast.
Steinmann says that TV3 had decided that the channel would have a lot of sports. Even before the “Lightning from Clear Heaven” call from the Ice Hockey Association, Australian Open had been sent in tennis.
– We drove via regular telephone connection. It was so amateurish so it was not true.
The Ice Hockey Association must still have thought that you would fix the assignment.
– So I think they did it because they wanted to fuck and get the price elsewhere. But this guy from Telesport said yes directly.
The former CEO laughs again.
Lars-Gunnar Björklund, Rolle Stoltz, Bo Gentzel, Ulf Elfving, Tommy Engstrand, Pa Gullö, Inge Hammarström… TV3 invested in renowned people for their World Cup broadcasts.
How easy was it to attract staff to such a new channel?
– You know, they got paid. They had not been paid very much on SVT.
Steinmann tells us that PA Gullö became the hockey World Cup “a giant thing”. The man, who many of us remembers as a little small profile of profile always wearing a fly, became first sports manager at TV3 and then he took over Jelbe’s company and signed production agreement for the World Feed with the International Ice Hockey Association.
When DN hits Gullö he says he has calculated that he has been at the Hockey World Cup for over two years of his life. 36 pieces of which he worked at anyway 30. But it was close that it was not a single one.
– In 1989 I worked in London and thought I was a bit established as a program manager, but a month before the World Cup no one had heard from me or editor Martin Älveby. We had lived with hockey since we were little and love hockey and then I said “we will not be able to join”.
In panic, they stepped away to Steinmann’s office and said they were willing to work for free. The CEO was quiet and Gullö thought “this is run”.
– But he went to the phone, lifted the handset and called the sports manager and said “you, the guys are going to go”.
What do you remember from the championship?
– In terms of work, it is the hardest thing I’ve been to. For two months later it was like post -traumatic stress. I just sat like a corpse. And then Steinmann comes and says “guys we should have wimbledon now”.
Jan Steinmann has another anecdot.
He says that Telesport was a little tense when they found out how small TV3 each. And uncertain whether the channel would be able to cope with its commitment.
– And then (the program leaders) Robert Aschberg and Gert Fylking got the idea that they would plan during any match we sent. Fylking ran around in a pink rabbit fan … I was told by Telesport that “if you do not remove them where the old men then we shut down”.
– They couldn’t shut down because we had an agreement but I got them off.
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