The game was developed
in the 1960s and 1970s in Sweden, floorball is most popular where it has been
developed the longest, such as the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden,
and Switzerland. It is gaining popularity in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and
the United States. As of 2014, there are over 300,133
registered floorball players worldwide. Professional
leagues include Finland's Salibandyliigaand Sweden's Svenska
Superligan.
The
sport is organized internationally by the International
Floorball Federation (IFF).
Events include an annual Euro Floorball Cup for club teams and the biennial World
Floorball Championships with
separate divisions for men and women. While the IFF contains 58 members, the
Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland have consistently placed 1st,
2nd, or 3rd at the World Floorball Championships.
The
sport is relatively new and therefore evolving. The basic rules were
established in 1979 when the first floorball club in the world, Sala IBK, was
founded in Sweden. Official rules
for matches were first written down in 1981.
In
various forms the game has been played since the early 20th Century in Canada as a recreational sport, especially in
high school gymnasiums, as a playful variant of hockey,
where the sticks got their form from the hockey game bandy.
Most Canadian males born in the 1950s and before could attest to this. Similarly,
during the 1950s and 1960s many
public school systems within Michigan incorporated floorball into their primary
and secondary school gym classes. Later, Americans claimed to have invented it,
and held interstate tournaments in the 1960s. The game was formally organized
as an international and more organised sport in the late 1970s in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The sport began as something that was played for fun as a pastime in schools. After
a decade or so, floorball began showing up in Nordic countries where the former schoolyard 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 and Germany). The
names "salibandy" and "innebandy" are derived from bandy;
they translate to "hall bandy" and "indoor bandy".
Unihockey is derived from "universal hockey" since it is meant to be
a special and simplified hockey form.
