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Regular Season Attendance in Europe & North America
Croatian club Medvescak Zagreb continues to impress with its attendance figures. The club that is currently playing in the semi-finals of the Austrian EBEL league improved its position (12th) and attendance (8,835) to break last year’s record. Impressive for a country with only 437 registered ice hockey players. Thanks to its success the club is being courted by the Russian KHL.
Croatia represents. We're ahead of Pardubice, Ufa, Dinamo Riga, Metallurg Magnitogorsk, Zurich Lions, MODO, HV71, etc. Yet we only have 437 hockey players in the country. Pretty impressive.
even if it's #1 you have also to have in mind that usa and canada have larger cities. and countries like swiss and sweden have 7.5 and 9.5 millions respectively:
Swiss:
Equipe Ville Capacité Population(Metropolitan area)
SC Bern Berne 17'131 133'920
Genève-Servette HC Genève 7'382 466'536
ZSC Lions Zürich 10'700 1'091'732
I agree with your point but those metro area numbres are too low, at least given the commonly used definition around the world, which is less restrictive than what you provided. Data from 2000 (from the Swiss gov't) has the Zurich metro at 1.6 million, Bern at 660k and Geneva close to 900k (though they're including Lausanne which is pushing it, but the Geneva wiki has 730k including the French suburbs which are very much a part of the metro.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that other countries do still have significant populations, like Germany and Russia, and their draws are still comparatively tiny when you put them side by side with the NHL's, not to mention that in some of those markets the hockey team is the #1 or #2 sport in the area, particularly in Russia, whereas that's only the case in Canadian cities as even the most traditional American hockey markets like Buffalo, Detroit, and Minnesota have teams in other sports that get much more attention from the locals.
The reason for Russia has already been given, for Germany it's quite a lot of things. The DEL isn't anywhere near the highest quality in hockey, hockey is even more low-profile than in North America, it has to compete with multiple sports that are about on one level with it, there aren't many arenas who support much higher numbers, most of the cities aren't even close to being the size of NHL-cities, heck, Straubing doesn't even have 50,000 inhabitants, and the biggest reason of all is football.
In Germany, there is football, then there comes football, followed by football, a huge amount of nothingness and then football. At least when it comes to team-sports.
2nd tier football has NHL-level attendance, and some teams go way beyond that, even tripling those numbers. 3rd tier football is still about on par with hockey and handball.
Berlin is proof that you can reach big numbers with hockey if the stars align correctly. A huge city with an enormously successful team leads to lot of sell-outs. The fact is, the number of hockey fans and players is very small, so you have to lure casual fans to the game, and those people have far more options than just following a hockey-team that even at its best is far from world-class.
Large parts of the country have anything but hockey-friendly weather, so interest is low. While that may be true in America as well, you still have the draw of a big sports-league that has a lot of money behind it. As evidenced by various southern NHL-teams, you can put a team about anywhere and quite a lot of people will come. In Germany, you don't have the draw of a major league, you don't have the money to put a hockey-team somewhere to try if it works, and you usually can't just put teams somewhere and expect people to come and see it. People usually expect a team to grow naturally and move up to higher leagues. So large parts of the population aren't accessible to hockey.
The budget of a single NHL-team can pay for the whole DEL, that's all one needs to know about the attraction of the league and attendance figures.
I agree with your point but those metro area numbres are too low, at least given the commonly used definition around the world, which is less restrictive than what you provided. Data from 2000 (from the Swiss gov't) has the Zurich metro at 1.6 million, Bern at 660k and Geneva close to 900k (though they're including Lausanne which is pushing it, but the Geneva wiki has 730k including the French suburbs which are very much a part of the metro.
these numbers are the "state numbers". beside itch case is a case.
Zürich has two more football clubs to feet, (whit 30.000 places itch). and another hockey team(kloten 7400)
bern has the hockey team, the football team(young boys)(30.000), and 3 more hockey teams(langnau 6500, biel 7000, langenthal 4000) and another football team(thun 10.000).
Geneva they don't really care about sports. they have a hockey team(7.400) and a football team(30.000). and they actually prefer go to France to see some soccer games.
and if the question is why we don't just create a big hockey club in these cities to play in nhl.... the answer is... no way josé! people don't care.even if you are fan from a crappy team... don't mention. we will stick it until the end.
even a fan from bern(exemple) would not care about it. in 2009 for the champions league(games between best clubs in europe), an europeen game...5000 maximum. a regular championship game... sell out.
Last edited by Special One: 03-16-2012 at 08:15 PM.
Stuff like this is honestly an amazing testament for how different hockey really is in North America from Europe. Granted, the U.S. and Canada tend to have significantly larger arenas (which is another statement altogether), but it is pretty surprising to see really only seven teams averaging 10,000+ per game over there, whereas (according to ESPN) the NHL hasn't had a team draw below 11,000 since at least 2000-2001.
And as it says at the bottom of TC's link, only four of the leagues in Europe draw above the AHL.
Honestly, the only thing it really shows is how different the demographics of the US and Canada is compared to Europe in general and the traditional European hockey countries in particular.
Russia is the only European hockey nation with more than one city with a metropolitan population above 1 million and most of the larger European hockey cities have more than one team. The NHL on the other hand has only one market with a metro population below 1 million (Winnipeg) and the only markets with more than one team have metro populations of 22 (NYC) and 14 million (LA).
these numbers are the "state numbers". beside itch case is a case.
Zürich has two more football clubs to feet, (whit 30.000 places itch). and another hockey team(kloten 7400)
(...)
even a fan from bern(exemple) would not care about it. in 2009 for the champions league(games between best clubs in europe), an europeen game...5000 maximum. a regular championship game... sell out.
As I said, I agree 100% with your argument, I was just pointing out that saying Bern is a city of 130,000 people and that the Zurich metro is barely a million strong is misleading. I don't disagree that in all these cases, there are plenty of other teams sharing that population.
Main reasons for the low attendance numbers in European hockey are:
a) Tiny interest in ice hockey in general
b) A lot of clubs compared to the population
Especially the latter one widely goes unnoticed. For example, there are ~9,5 million people living in Sweden (which covers roughly 170k quarter miles), which is pretty close to the population of metropolitan area of Chicago (10k square miles). I'm not even gonna try to guess how many ice hockey clubs there are in Sweden, but surely they are counted in thousands.
I don't even see the point of comparing a system that does not have protected markets and the main goal of teams is to not increase the return of 30 shareholders by 1 CEO.
Main reasons for the low attendance numbers in European hockey are:
a) Tiny interest in ice hockey in general
b) A lot of clubs compared to the population
IMO hockey numbers are more than alright. Its other thing that many of your expect it to be NHL.. which will never be..
Only one team sport is bigger than the previously mentioned sports.. football. Rugby is probably second biggest outdoor sport and its basically unexistant in 95% of the continent. Apart from UK, Ireland and the France your average European barely knows that sport exists..
The international game also attracts pretty decent crowds in Italy... But I was thinking more along the lines of tennis, golf, athletics, Formula 1 and (as you say) football.
Having said that, rugby is quite a good example of the need to crack the big markets. 15.4m in the UK and France tuned in to watch the latter beat Wales in the semi-final of last year's World Cup, higher than the total population of Sweden and Finland combined.
Is it really possible to compare team to individual sports? Hardly..
15.4m might have watched it in those two countries.. but apart from that.. no one even knew about the game. Number of people (talking in percentages) that follow hockey (any league or competition) in the UK and France is far bigger than number of people that follow rugby in the Scandinavia.
Honestly.. only 5 team sports have continent wide representation... at least on some decent level. Football, basketball, ice hockey, handball and if we push it.. volleyball. Then you have very regionalized sports like for example rugby and waterpolo which are huge in certain regions but almost completely unknown in most of the continent.
Is it really possible to compare team to individual sports? Hardly..
15.4m might have watched it in those two countries.. but apart from that.. no one even knew about the game. Number of people (talking in percentages) that follow hockey (any league or competition) in the UK and France is far bigger than number of people that follow rugby in the Scandinavia.
Honestly.. only 5 team sports have continent wide representation... at least on some decent level. Football, basketball, ice hockey, handball and if we push it.. volleyball. Then you have very regionalized sports like for example rugby and waterpolo which are huge in certain regions but almost completely unknown in most of the continent.
Handball and volleyball are sports people play in school but few people care about the pro game, most people just watch during the Olympics and World Champs. Germany's handball league is by far the biggest in the world and it's well behind Germany's hockey league in popularity.
Number of people (talking in percentages) that follow hockey (any league or competition) in the UK ... is far bigger than number of people that follow rugby in the Scandinavia.
That's basically the definition of 'bald men fighting over a comb'. Neither registers. However, I wasn't really arguing for rugby over ice hockey - if only because I can't be bothered - merely noting the necessity to crack the big TV markets. Maybe ice hockey has already done so to a degree in Germany, I don't know. Jus' sayin' that the Scandinavian countries aren't the answer in that respect, what with their relatively low populations.
Last edited by Bluebirds Boyo: 03-19-2012 at 05:31 PM.
The international game also attracts pretty decent crowds in Italy... But I was thinking more along the lines of tennis, golf, athletics, Formula 1 and (as you say) football.
Having said that, rugby is quite a good example of the need to crack the big markets. 15.4m in the UK and France tuned in to watch the latter beat Wales in the semi-final of last year's World Cup, higher than the total population of Sweden and Finland combined.
Yes but in Russia 23,3m tunned in to watch last semi final russia was in WC. And the only one how beats ice hockey of those i would say is Formula 1 and of cores football.
Is it? Attendance and TV ratings disagree. They are on pair. Basketball is behind it in Germany. Handball champions league gets a lot of attention. Both male and female. Especially in Scandinavia and central Europe
You can't even compare the ratings for handball and hockey in Germany because the handball league literally paid a channel to air their games on FTA tv whereas hockey is only on Sky.
But in terms of attendance the German hockey league is better. DEL average attendance so far in 2011/12: 6,011. Handball: 4,491. And that in spite of hockey having a lot more games. Total attendance in the DEL is over 2 million this year and handball is under 1 million. It's quite a gap.
Main reasons for the low attendance numbers in European hockey are:
a) Tiny interest in ice hockey in general
b) A lot of clubs compared to the population
Especially the latter one widely goes unnoticed. For example, there are ~9,5 million people living in Sweden (which covers roughly 170k quarter miles), which is pretty close to the population of metropolitan area of Chicago (10k square miles). I'm not even gonna try to guess how many ice hockey clubs there are in Sweden, but surely they are counted in thousands.
Actually, the number of clubs are "only" 698 in Sweden. These clubs have a total of 2 406 teams (for different ages and genders). That's about one club per 12 000 people.
Also, if we are comparing Scandinavia with the rest of Europe there is one other important difference. In Scandinavia you have hockey during the winter and football (soccer) during the summer... with some overlaping at the begining and the end of the seasons. In other parts of Europe both are played during the winter.
