Bandy is a growth proposition

 

Bandy will instantly expand the winter sports universe inside and outside the present Winter Olympic Universe. Moreover, it can grow further.

For growth, it is an advantage with heritage kinship sports that enable recruitment of young athletes from kin-heritage related summer sports. The larger category of summer sport is ball-sports. Bandy has traditionally recruited from football, tennis and other ball sports.

To scale broad recruitment affordable and environmentally friendly infrastructure is needed. Then winter sports can be dispersed onto densely populated urban areas. Outdoors and indoors ice sports is the branch of winter sport that can be deployed in urban areas where people live.

Large 100×60 meter artificial ice sheets may be shared with the general skating public of children, youth and families, and with the five skating sports and with curling. Bandy share venue with summer sports. In Norway alone bandy share with football, golf (driving range), tennis, (field-) hockey and inline skating.

The largest stock of existing infrastructure is the standard 100×60 meter rectangular used by many ball-sports. The price of artificial ice freezing technology has come down. And outdoor artificial ice is doable in relatively warm areas. The development of artificial ice infrastructure explains the successful growth of ice sports outside the wintry climate such as ice hockey, curling, and bandy.

 

Environmentally friendly infrastructure

In The Review (Olympic Programme Commission), section Environment, ice hockey, and curling receive this environmental score (condensed):

They have a low impact on the environment and venues as they usually are located in metropolitan areas, in an already degraded environment, and also represent an occasion for refurbishing and upgrading of metropolitan districts.

Bandy shares the same features and would on outdoor venues get an even better environmental score. Outdoor artificial ice improves the environmental result further by greater re-use of energy, arising from the temperature difference, used for heating nearby dwellings.