The International Ski & Snowboard Federation (FIS) ranked as the highest-performing Winter IF in the SportOnSocial International Federations 2026 report. They ranked #4 overall, #1 on Instagram and climbed +11 places overall, marking the strongest growth among similar-sized IFs. They also recorded engagement levels on a par with IFs four to six times larger in audience size.
FIS has enjoyed consistent SportOnSocial success, remaining in the top 15 over the last decade. Their success stems from a carefully crafted strategy that emphasises community, storytelling and experimentation.
Ahead of Milano Cortina 2026, FIS recognised the Games as a major discovery moment. Their focus was expanding global discovery while maintaining strong engagement with core winter sports audiences.
‘We’ve consistently focused on delivering value: timely in-season moments, accessible context year-round reasons to care across disciplines.’ – Benjamin Stoll, Director of Digital and Innovation at FIS.
Key factors to the long-term success of FIS
- Community-first platform strategy – fan communities than distribution channels.
- Athlete-driven storytelling – building relatable characters and narratives.
- Continuous experimentation – testing new formats, partnerships and approaches.
Treating each platform as a community
FIS treats every social platform as a distinct community with its own role, formats and audience behaviour.
Instagram plays a central role by combining global reach with diverse storytelling formats. This allows FIS to balance fast highlights with deeper narratives about athletes and competitions. Instagram also acts as a springboard to guide fans to longer-form content and other FIS experiences. Such an approach ensures FIS maintains both scale and depth of engagement across its global fan base.
Athlete storytelling drives discovery
FIS has focused on making athletes more relatable in sports where faces are often hidden. They build heroes and characters through storytelling that highlights athlete personalities, rivalries and journeys beyond results.
Athletes are encouraged to act as co-creators to provide a collaborative approach that strengthens authenticity and ultimately expands reach.
Experimentation & partnerships drive growth
FIS consistently experiments with new storytelling formats and digital partnerships. A key example is its partnership with TikTok as a global entertainment partner, which amplifies discovery through platform-native storytelling and creator collaborations.
At the same time, FIS continues to evolve its content ecosystem to support broadcasters and commercial partners, including sponsored storytelling formats and branded content series.
Balancing discovery with core fans
FIS leaned slightly towards reaching new audiences in the run-up to Milano Cortina, recognising the Olympic cycle as a major discovery moment for the sport.
The ‘I LOVE SNOW’ campaign was designed to scale beyond existing fans but to remain authentic to the sport.
This required simplifying
- simplifying storytelling formats
- reducing technical language
- offering continued deeper coverage for dedicated fans through discipline specific channels/longer-form content.
China as a strategic growth market
China represents an important long-term growth market for winter sports. FIS treats Chinese platforms as a distinct digital ecosystem that requires local formats, partnerships and creators.
During the Olympic period, FIS generated 26.5m reach and nearly 600k engagements across Chinese platforms (including Douyin, Rednote, Weibo). Their ambition is to convert this reach into long-term community engagement and participation in winter sports.
