WC: Shake-up of the lower tiers of IHWC

[Namejs]

According to Viesturs Koziols, a Latvian IIHF Council member, there's a tentative plan in place to reorganize the way lower tiers of the World Champs are set up.

According to him, Div1A and Div1B are going to be fused together creating a tournament of 14 to 16 teams, which would mirror the Elite tier.

The rest of the lower tier tournaments are going to be disbanded and are no longer going to be played annually. Instead of having Div2, Div3 and Div4 tournaments, the lower tier teams are going to play a qualification tournament to qualify for the World Championship.

I think this makes a lot of sense. In any other major team sport you don't get to play in the World Championship just because you can barely cobble together a team of amateurs.

Click to read more...

 

[MeHateHe]

That's unfortunate, if true. The purpose of those lower level tournaments was to encourage growth of the sport in far flung locales. It kept countries like Singapore and South Africa and New Zealand having something to play for while keeping them away from places where they had stronger leagues and development systems despite those places not being able to compete with the elite.

I understand that all those tournaments were expensive to put on, and they occasionally struggled to find hosts, but I'm not sure less stratification is better for overall growth of the game.

 

[Namejs]

That's unfortunate, if true. The purpose of those lower level tournaments was to encourage growth of the sport in far flung locales. It kept countries like Singapore and South Africa and New Zealand having something to play for while keeping them away from places where they had stronger leagues and development systems despite those places not being able to compete with the elite.

I understand that all those tournaments were expensive to put on, and they occasionally struggled to find hosts, but I'm not sure less stratification is better for overall growth of the game.

First of all, I think it would increase the prestige of the World Championship. If you're a country like Turkey or New Zealand, the goal of qualifying for the top 32 should be motivating enough.

Just like in soccer or basketball, most teams don't actually qualify.

I think it's absurd to have 5 tiers of 'World Championship' with medal ceremonies for people who can barely skate. It has a very token vibe to it. It's almost like the most exciting part of it is how bad and exotic the teams are. What purpose does it serve for the development of these teams?

They will have an increased focus on IIHF development programs for countries in the lower tiers instead.

Coming from a country like Latvia, qualifying for the Euros in soccer once in a blue moon is a massive achievement by its own right.

 

[dinamo1967]

That's unfortunate, if true. The purpose of those lower level tournaments was to encourage growth of the sport in far flung locales. It kept countries like Singapore and South Africa and New Zealand having something to play for while keeping them away from places where they had stronger leagues and development systems despite those places not being able to compete with the elite.

I understand that all those tournaments were expensive to put on, and they occasionally struggled to find hosts, but I'm not sure less stratification is better for overall growth of the game.

They will play qualifications. If San Marino, Malta and Gibraltar can play euro/fifa qualifiers without having 0.001% chance to qualify, don't see why New Zealand, Turkey or Mongolia wouldn't play IIHF qualifications as well.

I agree with Namejs that it is somewhat odd to see 40th ranked team in the World to get "Gold" medal...

 

[MeHateHe]

They will play qualifications. If San Marino, Malta and Gibraltar can play euro/fifa qualifiers without having 0.001% chance to qualify, don't see why New Zealand, Turkey or Mongolia wouldn't play IIHF qualifications as well.

I agree with Namejs that it is somewhat odd to see 40th ranked team in the World to get "Gold" medal...

To begin with, I think that as much of a gap as there is between Gibraltar and Germany in football, the gap between Singapore and Sweden in hockey is even greater. As well, I would be willing to bet the popularity of football in Gibraltar is a lot higher than the popularity of hockey in Singapore. The tournament pyramid in hockey is certainly disingenuous, but it allows countries to appeal to the casual sports fan, who might be interested in seeing their country play against similar competition, but wouldn't be able to pick Connor McDavid out of a lineup.

Yeah, the 'gold' medals are a weird thing in the lower pools, but that's not consequential in the grand scheme of things. If you're trying to build the game in places where it has only a toehold, I think you do that from the ground up, by getting people interested in their local game.

I suppose we'll see what the qualification system looks like.

 

[Albatros]

It's an awful idea for several reasons.

Firstly, there's little commercial or fan interest for an extended second-tier tournament. Some of the current tournaments work as well as they do much because the number of games is limited and the host team plays in the same arena every day.

Secondly, there is absolutely no commercial or fan interest whatsoever in qualification games between fringe teams for a second-tier tournament. For these programs it would be disastrous not only because they have no hope of qualifying for a meaningful tournament anymore, but also because no one will have any interest in financing such activity. It may feel gimmicky to hand out a trophy and gold medals to the winner of the fifth-tier World Championship Division II B, but that still provides good publicity for these programs which helps in securing financing and promoting the game.

The comparison to soccer also doesn't work, while it's true that San Marino isn't ever going to qualify for the FIFA World Cup, these qualification tournaments are still fairly major events with significant commercial value. They always play also against the likes of England and Germany, not only Andorra or Azerbaijan. Besides that there are also lower-tier competitions such as the UEFA Nations League or in club football the UEFA Conference League where clubs from localities like Gibraltar and the Faroe Islands have established a viable foothold.

 

[MeHateHe]

Secondly, there is absolutely no commercial or fan interest whatsoever in qualification games between fringe teams for a second-tier tournament.

Under this scenario, the Division II tournament would include Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Romania, Japan, Ukraine, South Korea, Lithuania, Estonia, China, Spain and Croatia.

On paper, that isn't a terrible tournament.

I suppose it depends on how big the rink is where they're playing. Given that most of the teams in this tournament would be north/central Europe, maybe they're hoping a few hundred fans from each country would get on a train for a few games? Then you might have a thousand people in a 2,500-seat rink?

On the other hand, maybe the IIHF is thinking that if they're going to lose money on lower level tournaments, at least this way they're only hosting one instead of six or seven lower level tournaments? I mean, I suspect that what this comes down to.

 

[Fjorden]

According to Viesturs Koziols, a Latvian IIHF Council member, there's a tentative plan in place to reorganize the way lower tiers of the World Champs are set up.

According to him, Div1A and Div1B are going to be fused together creating a tournament of 14 to 16 teams, which would mirror the Elite tier.

The rest of the lower tier tournaments are going to be disbanded and are no longer going to be played annually. Instead of having Div2, Div3 and Div4 tournaments, the lower tier teams are going to play a qualification tournament to qualify for the World Championship.

I think this makes a lot of sense. In any other major team sport you don't get to play in the World Championship just because you can barely cobble together a team of amateurs.

Is this the plan for u20(junior) and u18 aswell?

 

[Albatros]

Under this scenario, the Division II tournament would include Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Romania, Japan, Ukraine, South Korea, Lithuania, Estonia, China, Spain and Croatia.

On paper, that isn't a terrible tournament.

I suppose it depends on how big the rink is where they're playing. Given that most of the teams in this tournament would be north/central Europe, maybe they're hoping a few hundred fans from each country would get on a train for a few games? Then you might have a thousand people in a 2,500-seat rink?

On the other hand, maybe the IIHF is thinking that if they're going to lose money on lower level tournaments, at least this way they're only hosting one instead of six or seven lower level tournaments? I mean, I suspect that what this comes down to.

You'd have a couple of teams with traveling fans, sure, but it's still 64 games and at least two arenas. Italy hosted the Division I A this year and a game between Korea and Romania only attracted 252 fans despite being one of only 15 in the tournament and Italy playing hours later in the same building. By expanding the tournament massively the number of these games would grow exponentially.

Of course it's about money, these tournaments cost six digits to organize and top-tier countries would much rather keep the money for themselves than pay for tournaments they'll never have a role in. Put a small fraction of it into an "IIHF development program" to make it look like something else than what it is, abolishing international hockey in half of the hockey world.

 

[TomB]

I think if they do this, they need to increase the number of regional tournaments for teams outside these top two tiers. Going with the results from this past year, and assuming two groups of 16 (one for the Elite, one for this new Div 1):

Elite:
CAN, USA, SWE, FIN, CZE, SVK, SUI, GER, LAT, DEN, NOR, KAZ, AUT, FRA, SLO, HUN

Div 1:
GBR, POL, ITA, JPN, UKR, ROU, KOR, CHN, LTU, EST, ESP, CRO, NED, SRB, UAE, ISR

Then perhaps we have a European Tournament:
ISL, BEL, GEO, BUL, TUR, LUX, BIH, ARM

And two tiers of Asia/Oceania Tournaments:
Tier 1:
AUS, NZL, TPE, THA, TKM, KGZ
Tier 2 (maybe two groups of 5 at separate locations):
PRK, HKG, PHL, SGP, MGL, IRI, KUW, MAS, IDN, UZB

I don't know where Mexico and South Africa go. Maybe both go to the European group and make it two groups of 5 with different hosts.

You could set up a promotion-relegation so the bottom (or even bottom two) Euro teams and the bottom Asian teams are relegated from Div 1 and the regional winners are promoted each year.

This probably doesn't save much money though, which I'm sure is their ultimate goal. Hockey on the world scale be damned.

 

[SoundAndFury]

I appreciate Albatros trying to explain how horrible this idea is because I can't even begin to do it.

One thing I must add, however, is how ridiculous such a tournament would be hockey-wise. Even now, from my Lithuanian perspective, current D1B is 3 games that are basically walkovers that we are going to win and 1 game that is such to our opponents that we are going to lose. Really your placement boils down to 1, or maybe 2 games in certain years, where the level of nations is objectively close. That's partially why lower-division tournaments don't attract that much attention: they aren't close at all and the only hype they manage to generate is if you are on the winning side of those disingenuous medals. What interest would there be in a tournament where your team gets crushed in that many more games? And while the current format gave us here in Lithuania some 10k+ attendance games (well, at least one) there would be no chance of gathering even half of that if we were playing for 8th place or something in the best-case scenario.

I'm really yet to think of a single practical reason how this would be an improvement other than the "unfairness of calling lower division tournaments World Championships" which I find childish and it can be fixed by changing the name of the tournament if that is indeed the sole reason. It's also somewhat humourous coming from a Latvian person whose country just had their biggest-ever sports celebration a year ago winning pretty disingenuous bronze themselves. Let's face it, if we move the line ever so slightly, elite division WC is just as much of a sham. But there is no denying it gets casual fans to care.

 

[Namejs]

I appreciate Albatros trying to explain how horrible this idea is because I can't even begin to do it.

One thing I must add, however, is how ridiculous such a tournament would be hockey-wise. Even now, from my Lithuanian perspective, current D1B is 3 games that are basically walkovers that we are going to win and 1 game that is such to our opponents that we are going to lose. Really your placement boils down to 1, or maybe 2 games in certain years, where the level of nations is objectively close. That's partially why lower-division tournaments don't attract that much attention: they aren't close at all and the only hype they manage to generate is if you are on the winning side of those disingenuous medals. What interest would there be in a tournament where your team gets crushed in that many more games? And while the current format gave us here in Lithuania some 10k+ attendance games (well, at least one) there would be no chance of gathering even half of that if we were playing for 8th place or something in the best-case scenario.

I'm really yet to think of a single practical reason how this would be an improvement other than the "unfairness of calling lower division tournaments World Championships" which I find childish and it can be fixed by changing the name of the tournament if that is indeed the sole reason.

Status quo bias.

Latvia has thousands of traveling fans with very few 8th place finishes over the span of 30 years.

I think it's childish to assume that grounding things and aligning the placement with, you know, reality would somehow lead to a drop in popularity of the sport.

Whenever minnows face superior teams, their expectations should be adjusted accordingly. If you like winning, you should improve your national team. They shouldn't hand out participation trophys as if this were a kindergarden.

And, no, it's not a matter of renaming the tournaments, it's about redirecting income to develop the sport in lower ranked countries instead of holding multiple tournaments just for the sake of it.

 

[Albatros]

And, no, it's not a matter of renaming the tournaments, it's about redirecting income to develop the sport in lower ranked countries instead of holding multiple tournaments just for the sake of it.

Sending a few bags of hockey equipment and a coach for an occasional training camp in Kyrgyzstan or Mongolia is not a bad thing in a vacuum, but it does nothing for growing the game in comparison to meaningful national team hockey. Even financially these governments and winter sports federations will just cut funding from hockey and target other sports with better perspectives instead. A bargain bin smoke screen for dismantling the game is what the "IIHF development program" really is.

 

[SoundAndFury]

Latvia has thousands of traveling fans with very few 8th place finishes over the span of 30 years.

And yet dozen times more bandwagon in when you won something shiny. Which is how sports grow, which is why winning is important to any environment or market. You can really take more or less any hockey league in the world as an example. If you have a winning team attendance/coverage/interest rises, if a losing one it drops. It's basic stuff. Which the whole point was about. And you can see how many actual hockey fans there are in Latvia if you look the attendance numbers of your arenas and how does it compare to again, something shiny crowds.

Participation trophies is the only thing generating income at the lower levels and you are yet to name one legitimate reason why is it so bad. Other than that amateur teams winning childish awards hurt your feelings.

You treat this whole discussion as if instead of growing the sport IIHF should be interested in punishing bad [at hockey] countries for being bad. Like that will motivate the populations to pick it up.

 

[Namejs]

I think the whole argument boils down to whether the IIHF will actually take meaningful steps towards the development of the sport in these lower ranked nations. You assume it's just a backwards way of cutting them off.

I don't know if that assumption is warranted or not.

 

[Albatros]

The IIHF development programs do not exist to support hockey in developing countries in particular, more so to channel funds to the federations of major hockey powers. Or as the IIHF financial report puts it: "The basis for the calculation of the development support is usually the final ranking at the Championship, meaning that the World Champion has done an excellent work in the development of the players and should therefore be rewarded with the highest support."

 

[aquaregia]

I don't think anyone winning a gold medal in say division 3B is under any illusion that their achievement is on par with being champions at elite level l0l.
Like your local amateur league will still have a trophy to crown its champion, does that mean because its not the Stanley Cup you should be ashamed to be lifting it? Ridiculous argument.

The gap between 17. and 32. I would say is much wider, or would manifest itself in much wider scorelines than between 1. and 16.
In a way, the current structure of groups of 6 below the Elite level already functions as a long-term means of qualification for the World Championships; except in one-year cycles rather than four with FIBA or FIFA, as examples that you used. I think given the nature of the sport and the quality gaps between the countries that play it, this is as close as you're going to get to making sure each individual game is well-matched and meaningful.

As for whether federations would schedule games of their own accord without the lower tiers in place - well look at what happened to rugby union outside of Europe post-COVID restrictions...

 

[Maverick41]

It's an awful idea for several reasons.

Firstly, there's little commercial or fan interest for an extended second-tier tournament. Some of the current tournaments work as well as they do much because the number of games is limited and the host team plays in the same arena every day.

Secondly, there is absolutely no commercial or fan interest whatsoever in qualification games between fringe teams for a second-tier tournament. For these programs it would be disastrous not only because they have no hope of qualifying for a meaningful tournament anymore, but also because no one will have any interest in financing such activity. It may feel gimmicky to hand out a trophy and gold medals to the winner of the fifth-tier World Championship Division II B, but that still provides good publicity for these programs which helps in securing financing and promoting the game.

The comparison to soccer also doesn't work, while it's true that San Marino isn't ever going to qualify for the FIFA World Cup, these qualification tournaments are still fairly major events with significant commercial value. They always play also against the likes of England and Germany, not only Andorra or Azerbaijan. Besides that there are also lower-tier competitions such as the UEFA Nations League or in club football the UEFA Conference League where clubs from localities like Gibraltar and the Faroe Islands have established a viable foothold.

The only thing I disagree with is your assertion to that San Marino will never qualify for the FIFA World Cup (I'll also include the EUROS). Given the desire for expansion by FIFA and UEFA they will soon have to invent new countries to fill all the spots.
Obviously that's just sarcasm.

But seriously great post. A change as it seems to be proposed here would backfire big time when it comes to growing the game.

 

[kabidjan18]

I think from a logistics perspective this simply makes a lot more sense. I don’t think the format of the lower tier world championships makes any difference on national development. It’s well documented that the smaller federations are struggling on money…I think this goes to that.


I think you split the countries into geographies. Then you draw them up into groups for a group stage. They go play a home and away during the international break when normally they would be playing friendlies. Winner of the groups advances to stage 2, so on.

 

[alko]

Instead of having Div2, Div3 and Div4 tournaments, the lower tier teams are going to play a qualification tournament to qualify for the World Championship.

How should this work? All teams from this divisions will play in one tournament?

 

[aquaregia]

They go play a home and away during the international break when normally they would be playing friendlies.

Thing is though for pretty much any team below 1B, the only time they actually get together and play is through these world championship events, so no such 'friendlies' really exist. Even the Asian continental competitions that were held regularly before COVID don't seen to have started up again.

And if the argument for changing up their schedule is to ease the costs of travel, having lower tier teams play multiple home-and-away series is only going to increase the burden compared to the current situation.

 

[SoundAndFury]

Also for the countries at 1A/1B, this longer tournament would obviously be THAT much more expensive.

 

[kabidjan18]

Thing is though for pretty much any team below 1B, the only time they actually get together and play is through these world championship events, so no such 'friendlies' really exist. Even the Asian continental competitions that were held regularly before COVID don't seen to have started up again.

And if the argument for changing up their schedule is to ease the costs of travel, having lower tier teams play multiple home-and-away series is only going to increase the burden compared to the current situation.

Not necessarily. Most of these championships last a week long. Teams have to travel the world over to be housed for a week. There are travel costs, housing costs, and venue costs.

When you guarantee regionality, especially in Europe, but also with some Asian matchups, these trips can be overnight bus trips. And you only will have to rent a hotel for one or two nights. Of course on the whole it will impact different countries differently, some may see their costs go up. I suspect that they will do a feasibility study before approving any such changes to make sure that they will in fact save on costs.

 

[SoundAndFury]

When you guarantee regionality, especially in Europe, but also with some Asian matchups, these trips can be overnight bus trips.

I get a feeling that proponents of this suggestion just say stuff without even basic fact-checking about how their ideas correspond with reality.

Under the currently suggested format, the absolute majority of hockey-playing European countries would play in the prolonged 2nd tier championship. Countries outside of it are: Belgium, Iceland, Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, Luxembourg, Bosnia. Bulgaria and Turkey is the only pair that could theoretically fit this bus trip scenario without a completely unreasonable skill gap.

Your argument applies to 7 European countries in the loosest terms (Iceland between those ) and would benefit a few of those, at best. Meanwhile well over 10 would be subjected to playing a tournament that is at least twice as long and expensive.

 

[kabidjan18]

I get a feeling that proponents of this suggestion just say stuff without even basic fact-checking about how their ideas correspond with reality.

Under the currently suggested format, the absolute majority of hockey-playing European countries would play in the prolonged 2nd tier championship. Countries outside of it are: Belgium, Iceland, Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, Luxembourg, Bosnia. Bulgaria and Turkey is the only pair that could theoretically fit this bus trip scenario without a completely unreasonable skill gap.

Your argument applies to 7 European countries in the loosest terms (Iceland between those ) and would benefit a few of those, at best. Meanwhile well over 10 would be subjected to playing a tournament that is at least twice as long and expensive.

I think the very clear goal is to not avoid unreasonable skill gaps. So, for example, Luxembourg, Belgium, easy trip. Bosnia and Serbia, very easy trip.

But I'm really annoyed by your use of the term "proponents." I'm not saying "I think this idea is great for hockey development." I'm saying, they clearly have done a feasibility study, or are doing a feasibility study, they have a plan in mind to cut costs and they'll verify if that's realistic or not.

To me this is clearly meant as a cost-cutting measure and if the feasibility study finds that it leads to savings, they will probably do it because the bottom 20 federations are substantially poorer than the middle 10. And you won't like me saying this, but most of the countries in D1 are either relatively close to each other, or are wealthy asian nations who will probably never get to host a tournament again.