Floorball

Floorball, a type of floor hockey, is an indoor team sport which was developed in the 1970s. It is a fast paced sport, with limited physical contact allowed. Floorball is most popular in areas where the sport has developed the longest, such as the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland.^{[citation needed]} The game is played indoors on a gym floor, making it a year-round sport at the amateur and professional levels. There are professional leagues, such as Finland's Salibandyliiga and Sweden's Svenska Superligan.

While there are 49 members of the International Floorball Federation (IFF), the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland have finished in most of the coveted 1st, 2nd and 3rd places at the Floorball World Championships.

In addition to those four countries, floorball is gaining popularity in countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and the United States.

Although the history of floorball's origins is unknown, it is believed that North Americans that immigrated to Scandinavia developed the game from ball hockey in the 1970s.^{[citation needed]} The game is believed to have originated in Gothenburg, Sweden. The sport began as something that was played for fun as a pastime at schools, and pre-season training for bandy clubs. After a decade or so, floorball began showing up in Scandinavian countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden, where the once school pastime was becoming a developed sport. Formal rules soon were developed, and clubs began to form. After some time, several countries developed national associations, and the IFF was founded in 1986.

The game of floorball is also known by many other names, such as salibandy (in Finland), innebandy (in Sweden and Norway), and unihockey (in Switzerland). The names 'salibandy' and 'innebandy' are derived from a sport similar to hockey called bandy. Both of those names literally translate to 'indoor bandy'.

Expansion:

When the IFF was founded in 1986, the sport was played in mostly Scandinavian countries, Japan, and several parts of Europe. By 1990, floorball was recognized in 7 countries, and by the time of the first European Floorball Championships in 1994, that number had risen to 14. That number included the United States, who were the first country outside of Europe and Asia to recognize floorball ^[1]. By the time of the first men's world championships in 1996, 20 nations played floorball, with 12 of them participating at the tournament.

As of 2009, the sport of floorball has been played in almost 80 countries. Of those, 49 have national floorball associations that are recognized by the IFF. With the addition of Sierra Leone, Africa's first floorball nation, the IFF has at least one national association on each continent of the world, with the exception of Antarctica.