Aalto Alum and Sports Director Jyrki Louhi offered financial knowledge to Aalto's competitive athletes

Aalto University aims to enable dual careers for its athletes. The dual career of athletes means that combining goal-oriented sports and studies is as smooth and balanced as possible. Aalto University and the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Sports Academy Urhea have had a partnership agreement since 2015.

Timo Korkeamäki, Dean of the School of Business, visited Aalto University's Urhea students at a meeting on 22 November. ‘Sports are important and relevant to and for our society. It's great that there are a lot of you athletes at Aalto, and that all of you are much better athletes than I was in my university years when I did shot-putting.’ 

In the spring audit, the School of Business was found to be a top athlete-friendly higher education institute. ‘This pilot audit was limited to only one school, but now that we have gained experience from it, the aim is to expand the audit to cover other Aalto higher education institutions in the future. Although we received good feedback in the audit, the aim is to continuously develop Urhea activities,’ Timo Korkeamäki said.

Example of growth funding for young Finnish athletes

The main guest of the evening was an alum of the School of Business, a former ice hockey player, and currently a start-up entrepreneur and chair of the board of Hämeenlinnan Pallokerho HPK, Jyrki Louhi. After his career in sports and graduation with a Master’s degree in economics and business administration, Jyrki worked at KPMG on auditing, tax and legal services and, in particular, sports services. Jyrki talked about the Sport Fund capital investment fund that he set up, which will invest in 18 individual athletes over a three-year period.

Jyrki and a few other former top athletes, such as another ‘Runeberginkatu graduate’ Alum of the School of Business, ex-figure skater Laura Lepistö, aim to acquire growth funding for young Finnish athletes through the Sport Fund. The goal is to improve the position of young athletes in society. The fund is the world's first fund investing in limited companies for athletes.

Jyrki and other former top athletes who invested in Sport Fund want to make sport funding professional by bringing an entrepreneurial template also to the sports world. Investors want to provide young competitive athletes with entrepreneurial skills that young athletes will benefit from even after their sports career ends. 

‘There are about thirty investors in the fund, which has been created for athletes and not particularly for the asset management of their investors. Of course, there must be a certain degree of reciprocation in order to receive significant capital,’ Jyrki said.

Athletes’ financial challenges under consideration

Ella Salo, a third-year student of Information and Service Management (ISM) and a TeamGym gymnast, said that Jyrki Louhi's presentation evoked many emotions and that his bold approach to sports finances aroused admiration and questions among the students. 

‘The presentation opened my eyes to the financial challenges of athletes and raised the question of how we can improve the financial position of athletes. Louhi's speech highlighted the need to create better support structures for athletes and raise awareness of these challenges. More generally, a question arose about how we could promote open discussion on finances in the sports world and support athletes on their path both in competitions and financially,’ Ella explains.

First-timers also attended the Urhea meeting. Arvi Savolainen, a first-year student in business administration and an athlete in Greco-Roman wrestling, was one of them. Arvi is a many-time Finnish champion in his sport and has also been successful in international arenas. ‘In the 2020 European Championships in Rome, I ranked fifth in the 130 kg weight class. In the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, I made it to the bronze match and eventually also ranked fifth. In the 2022 European championships, I won silver in the 97 kg weight class.’  

The Urhea working group at Aalto serves as a link between Aalto University, Urhea and students and develops Aalto's practices to enable dual careers for athletes. The Aalto University's Urhea contact persons who attended the meeting were Tiina Kerola, Piia Ylitalo and team leader Elli Hämäläinen as well as Professor of Practice and Aalto’s person in charge of Urhea Sami Itani from the Department of Management Studies at the School of Business. Please do not hesitate to contact them in any matters related to Urhea.

Text and photo: Terhi Ollikainen