Finland loves hockey
- Thread starter Coinneach
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FinPanda
Barkov Stanley cup champ!
Shame the stands are full of business people and not real fans so atmosphere sucks. Ticket prices way too high so it ruins Team Finland games.
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Even with cheaper ticket prices there probably wouldn't be much of a fan section at these games. The culture just isn't there.
The tickets for Euro 2020 weren't exactly cheap either but that didn't stop SMJK from chanting throughout the matches.
FinPanda
Barkov Stanley cup champ!
I thought the atmosphere in 2016 WJC was good. But yeah we lack like proper fan club for our hockey team.
Puck Dogg
Puck life
- Mar 13, 2006
- 1,812
- 497
There's a large percentage of the population that watches only World Championships or more so only when Finland plays. It has been that way since the -95 win and it has became somewhat a thing.
It's in my opinion similar to Eurovision song contest. There's not many that follow the European soft pop scene but there's plenty of people who will watch Eurovision song contest.
It's in my opinion similar to Eurovision song contest. There's not many that follow the European soft pop scene but there's plenty of people who will watch Eurovision song contest.
Eye of Ra
Grandmaster General of the International boards
Eye of Ra
Grandmaster General of the International boards
They are great at it. Arvydas Sabonis is a legend. I wish Sweden was better at basketball. We are just shit.
Rob
Registered User
My understanding is that Finland and Canada are the only two countries where hockey is #1
BusQuets
Registered User
- Jul 16, 2010
- 12,078
- 3,054
Not really. The Finnish league gets pretty bad attendance. For example Swedish league gets much better attendance. Swedes seem to actually love hockey more. Finnish people just like to watch international games every now and then.
vlady
Registered User
I would say also Slovakia, Latvia, possibly Czechia and Russia.
Too bad ticket prices are so overpriced that there are no real fans in the building itself.
Finland's games aside, it's not even a smart business move to have non-Finland's games so expensive that no one's in attendance. Imagine if entry was only 10 or 20 euros for some lower end games - you'd see many more people in the audience, and they'd make 5 times the profit on beer and soft drink sales.
Finland's games aside, it's not even a smart business move to have non-Finland's games so expensive that no one's in attendance. Imagine if entry was only 10 or 20 euros for some lower end games - you'd see many more people in the audience, and they'd make 5 times the profit on beer and soft drink sales.
Tough to get excited for a league where teams earn their spots based on cabinet decisions rather than by qualifying like in Sweden.
Coinneach
Registered User
Coinneach
Registered User
Finns have become used to success. Namely, if Finland plays in the bronze-medal game nobody really cares.
If the current format had been in place in the 80s and Finland had played in a bronze medal-game everybody would have watched.
If the current format had been in place in the 80s and Finland had played in a bronze medal-game everybody would have watched.
FinPanda
Barkov Stanley cup champ!
Soccer has better fans, but the interest is still not at the aame level as hockey. The interest for soccer is rising though because of the recent success when we played at the Euros.
IceHockeyDude
Registered User
Depends how it measured. There are more registered football-players than those who play hockey.
Coinneach
Registered User
IceHockeyDude
Registered User
In that case hockey is more popular. The European championships where Finland took part for the first time gathered 500k-1,4M audience. The number is high but way below the WHCs.
General interest of Finnish football-league is not high.
Puck Dogg
Puck life
- Mar 13, 2006
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National team draws around 10,000-30,000 depending on the opponent. The local league average is around 1,500-2,000. HJK Helsinki at home or away can get double figures and Helsinki derby between HJK and HIFK triple or more. The numbers are very modest compared to Sweden for example.
As rule of thumb Finnish soccer top level league gets roughly half of the spectators what Liiga does. Soccer is popular at junior level as a hobby though.
Finland together with Lithuania where basketball is the no1 sport are the two European outliers in that sense that soccer isn't the most watched sport.
I think at least in Finland that could change in the future.
I think at least in Finland that could change in the future.
Coinneach
Registered User
The national football team has been drawing a very good following for their qualifying matches abroad even when they had no chance of actually making it to major tournaments. The fact that football as a spectator sport isn't nearly as popular as hockey in Finland makes it more attractive to some people. Many loyal supporters of our national football team have a very elitist and hipsteresque attitude toward hockey fans. They think hockey fans are a bunch of uneducated, xenophobic, semi-literate rubes who like to drink crappy bulk lager and wear ridiculous clown costumes at the world championships, whereas football fans know a lot about eclectic craft beers and trendy clothes.
The Finnish national football team also played many home matches here in Tampere in the recent years while the stadium in Helsinki was under renovation and I have to say their fans aren't completely wrong. When you scan the streets of Tampere before a Finland football match it's a very different sight from the current IIHF carnival. It's pretty easy to see that the average supporter of our football team is socioeconomically above the average Leijonat fan.
You also have to take into account that foreign football leagues draw a bigger crowd in Finland than foreign hockey leagues. The NHL has become way more familiar to us Finns thanks to streaming services and cable channels but the time difference between Finland and America makes it harder to follow compared to the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga and the UEFA Champions League.
On top of having a new state-of-the art hockey arena right in the city centre Tampere will also get a new football stadium in 2024 in Tammela with a capacity of 8,000. Tammela is very close to the city as well. I'm confident Ilves will draw decent numbers there. The attendance was already pretty good at the old run-down stadium in the same location before the rebuild started.
The Finnish Liiga certainly isn't as big as the SHL but the combined attendance for the playoffs at the new Nokia Arena here in Tampere was about 165,000. That was all in the span of 32 days.
They're constantly dishing out a promo code at the fan zone that gives you a 50 percent discount for those tickets. Maybe the attendance would be better if more people knew about this.
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Even though soccer isn't the no 1 sport in Finland it is still widely followed. We are not like America where you are very hard pressed to find anyone who knows anything about soccer or cares about it.
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