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The places near either side of the border aren’t particularly well populated.
I'd like to think so. I mean our state high school hockey tournament pulled in 22,000 people for one of the semi final games a few years back. Then again, Minnesotans are pretty rabid about the local hockey. High school boys ice hockey in Minnesota - Wikipedia
Winnipeg is only an 8ish hour drive to Minnie/Saint Paul and the World Juniors should not even be near big cities with little interest in junior hockey. Minnesota lives and breathes hockey, The X literally sells out 18,000+ every year for High School kids. If tickets aren’t stupidly priced theyll have no problem selling out games for the US World Junior squad and getting travellers from over the border.
It would be a festival akin to IIHF World Championships in Europe and I would absolutely go and get drunk and watch hockey all day lol.
How would they do with teams not USA or Canada? That often can be the marker, I thought last year the crowds were buzzing for even the smaller nations games. While in the past in NA, a game like Austria-Germany would be a disaster attendance wise.
Historically, they choose American cities near larger Canadian border cities so that it will be well attended by Canadians. World Juniors aren't a big thing in the U.S.
It would depend on ticket prices for the less interesting games, you would get a huge amount of youth engagement and family interest, as the usual high school hockey crowd would likely be all over this and interested in just watching all players at this level. But they are used to paying $10 a pop to watch quality hockey games in person, and this does go down in the middle of youth tourney season, though I bet there would be some schedule adjustments to things like the Schwanns tourney for an event like the world juniors.
There are more than enough people on both sides of the border to support a US hosted WJC in Minnesota.
Yes, perhaps, that's why they are contemplating them, but those are the reasons amongst others why it hasn't been in the past. They've even done the world juniors in Grand Forks, North Dakota before because it's close to Winnipeg.
Yeah and that was a terrible idea frankly. No one wants to drive through Fargo in the middle of winter besides absolutely crazies. I love the world juniors and didn’t go for that, they saw that it hosts a youth international tournament every year and packs the house but that is a one time annual event flooded with participants family and scouts, it cuts out the entire metro area where all the people, money, and interest are.
They will sell out most games if tickets are priced fairly
