I'm not sure why FIS is so "proud", considering they are announcing they've signed a contract to sell something to which they do not have the rights to sell. It is roughly equivalent to an announcement that they have sold the Brooklyn Bridge.
This is the same old problem which caused chaos on the World Cup tour in 2000 and in 2004. There are two World Cup technical properties, TIMING and DATA. FIS has rights to DATA, but individual Federations hosting races have the rights to TIMING.
Some Federations (the ones unable to get sponsorship) may be willing to cede their rights to TIMING back to FIS, but the "Gang of Four" (SLO-AUT-CAN-USA) very clearly are not. The Austrians, in particular, have proved that their TIMING sponsorships with SIEMENS, Aon, A1, and Rolex make a nice profit for the team. Ceding their TIMING rights back to FIS would cost the Austrian Team a ton of sponsorship money. Bill Marolt of the US team also recently re-affirmed the value of the TIMING property to the US team, a speech that was widely reported in the media.
The validity of this contract appears to be contingent on The Swatch Group's willingness to provide TIMING & DATA only to events where they are invited. In the past, they have not, The Swatch Group has insisted on providing both TIMING and DATA to all WC events unconditionally, or they toss their toys from the pram, stomp their feet in anger, and go home. Swatch attempted to ruin both Soelden and Lake Louise in 2004 by withholding their promised services within days or even hours of the event weekend, but they failed. FIS also threatened to pull the plug on the womens WC races at Altenmarkt Zauchansee in December of 2004 on Swatch's behalf, on the day before the event, but their bluff again failed.
Nobody knows why the FIS keeps doing this sort of thing. I've heard rumours that both FIS Marketing VP Kristian Knauth and FIS president Gianfranco Kasper are sporting brand new $25,000 Patek Phillippe wristwatches (A Swatch brand), but I haven't seen either of those guys in a while, so I can't verify. Knauth has been avoiding North America since the latest iteration of this controversy in 2004, but we are hoping he'll show up at WC in Lake Louise later this month to enjoy some Canadian hospitality.
