The men's ice hockey world championship started today. That's a good reason to ask a few questions.
How popular is ice hockey in your country?
Can it keep up with football?
Will the World Cup be broadcast on TV in your country?
If your country is taking part, how do you rate the chances?
39 comments
We don’t even have a skating rink. Though that might change as some developer wants to build an ice rink and multi sports venue in Dublin.
We have been the world champions of ice skating for centuries.
But our hockey we only do on fields.
Where we have had world championships as well.
I never hear or see anything about it here in the Netherlands, so I guess itâs quite unpopular. If itâs broadcasted somewhere, it would probably be on some obscure sports channel
Despite being rather small in number of athletes icehockey is the third largest sport in terms of spectators in Denmark
Furthermore Denmark has for many years beenthe country with most players in the NHL per number of active players
most popular sport, yes, yes, i think we have a chance for a medal of some kind
Absolutely not popular. Speed skating, yes. Field hockey, yes. Ice hockey, no. No idea why. đ€·ââïž
Fairly popular, especially in the South of Austria. If lakes freeze in winter (which doesnât happen that often anymore), you can often see some people playing ice hockey.
The biggest sport in Finland when considering amount of people following.
Football on the other hand is not so popular, it is fairly common hobby for kids and young people but it does lose in popularity to ice hockey in viewers.
Sweden: Second only to football. Looking at attendance so are 17.5 of the 35 most popular teams in Sweden playing hockey and 17.5 are playing football (the reason for the half is that one club for some reason did not publish their football and hockey team separate). We also have the fourth most successful men’s national team of all time, right behind Czechoslovakia/Czechia, and while we are currently seventh in the rankings do I think we have pretty good chances. Of course it’s on TV, junior world cup as well (Christmas tradition)
Poland: Managed to not get relegated from division I earlier in the year, so that’s good. Much better at any sport that is about getting a ball over a net. Luckily I have access to Swedish TV even from here.
Not so much. (Poland) But mine south neighbors are great at it. (Czech Republic)
Ice hockey is the hounded stepchild among winter-sports in Norway.
Normally, winter-sport is our go-to, we want to win everything, always. But hockey? It just never caught on.
It does have some followers, though. A few towns- unsurprisingly, the closer to Sweden you get, the higher the probability. But it’s weirdly not popular.
Funnily my country is divided. In most states football is the most important sport. But in the most southern part named Carinthia, where I live, we don’t care much about football because we have ice hockey. We joke it’s a religion with two denominations (as there are two big clubs which are of course heavy rivals).
No idea about TV broadcasts, as I live on the Internet.
1. It is played, but not overly popular.
2. No
3. not that I know of. It will probably be mentioned in the 5 minute sports section of the Morgenmagazin (morning TV show). They talk about fringe sports, too.
4. we probably do and I have not the slightest ideaÂ
I am german.
Not really. I think there are fans, but the games aren’t widely discussed. In the USSR hockey was much more popular.
UK. A niche but dedicated fanbase.
On a related note, those who don’t follow it but have watched a game in the states or Canada, they can’t speak highly enough of it, especially compared to them going to a NFL or Baseball game.
Someone gives a fuck in the alps, otherwise no one cares
It does exist but I think it’s quite niche. Most larger cities have a team.
Roller Hockey is very popular here. Used to be the most popular sport after football but has been losing some popularity. However, still a top sport here.
Regarding the ice variant, I’m not even aware of ice rings existing here. If someone wants to play hockey here, they’ll play roller hockey.
I don’t understand the question. As if there were any other…?
Very popular, most popular sport. Football can’t keep up, especially domestic football.
Yes the championships are broadcasted, but only Finlands games and finals are broadcasted free to television, other matches are available in subscriptions.
The event is a huge thing every year with lots of advertising and discussions and experts talking and news etc
I don’t see big chances with the team now, but hey, no one did also in 2019 so let’s see. But Finland is among the big six of ice hockey so we always have expectations to be atleast in top 4
Many norwegians cities hardly have any arenas to play icehockey in.. So hard to speak of popularity when you don’t have places where they can play or watch the sport. And the for the places where they have one, the time schedule is packed.
Think that distinguished norway from our hockey-mad neighbours sweden where they have hockey arenas everywhere.
I live in the Netherlands and it’s like it doesn’t exist. I’m from Canada (but I’m one of the few that cares about the WC), so it kills me watching how bad the best clubs are. I have a group of friends here where we’re all from hockey countries and we try to go abroad once or twice per season to watch some hockey (usually in Germany or Czechia).
Since youâre also German, you already know that itâs not super popular here, but for example I come from a city that has a first league team and these places tend to have a stronger follower base. But all in all not very popular.
<- Czech living in Saarland. Yeah in my homeland it’s big. Saarland doesn’t even have a club in DEL.Not even sure if there is any ice ring in here.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t be wearing a Czech jersey and drinking a Budweiser on 19.5.when I meet with my German friends to watch the match in the pub!
Second largest sport to Football, which is odd considering we are world class at ice hockey and complete garbage at football. Very likely to get top 3, pretty likely to make the finals.
Going by average attendance per game, itâs the second most popular sport after football.
Soccer (FuĂball) is by far more popular in Germany, but ice hockey has its dignity and the world cup is definitely broadcasted.
No, it’s not popular at all. There is a small national league with 8 teams apparently (I just searched out of curiosity) but I’d never heard of it.
Slovenian here… We play in WC, we have Anze Kopitar, but… We have 5 clubs in 1. league and basically the same amount of skating rings.
Not very popular, I donât know anyone that plays it.
However we do have a team, the Belfast Giants and an arena, the SSE/Odyssey Arena.
Skating on ice, yes and one of the top countries
Hockey on a field, yes and one of the top countries
Ice hockey, no not at all
If someone speaks French and is a good hockey player, he’s a QuĂ©bĂ©cois. Nuff said.
Pretty popular I guess. No, football will not keep up with ice hockey. Quarter final or semifinal will be very good.Â
Almost non-existent. Field hockey (which is just called ‘hockey’ in Dutch) is significantly more popular and even that is somewhat niche.
The World Championship the biggest event of the year, period (it is not the World Cup, that’s a different thing).
Latvian NT games in May usually take the best part of top 10 TV broadcasts of the year, among ALL broadcasts. The president’s and prime minister’s New Year’s speech maybe gets in there.
However, for a weird enough contrast, the local league games are looking very bleak. The teams themselves often have trouble sustaining their operations. There are fans going to some games, especially if they’re important playoff matches or maybe a big weekend game between top teams, but club culture in Latvia in any sport is lacking behind, and football actually might have gotten the upper hand there over the last 5 years.
However, the World Championship in hockey is a different beast. Everyone is following. When I grew up teachers would just let people watch in lessons if there were matches during school time. If the championship is anywhere near you can be sure the Latvian games feel like home matches. Even the pre-championship friendlies sell out the arena. Back in 2023, when the NT won the first ever medal after an OT Bronze match win against USA, the national parliament actually announced a nationwide holiday on the day when the team came back home. [The celebration was massive.](https://bauskasdzive.lv/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/WhatsApp-attels-2023-05-29-plkst.-14.54.35.jpg)
It is shown on National TV for free, and so is every other match of the tournament, they’re available on the national TV streaming site.
As for expectations, they’re largely the same every year. We’re always feeling good enough to be on the brink of quarterfinals as the 4th team and making the QF is a successful year. We feel like with a good game we can bite literally anyone, but similarly we can have close games with anyone because clinical attack usually isn’t our strong suit – it’s rather work rate and willpower to get stuck in.
I enjoyed watching hockey in the 90s up till the 2010s, it was quite popular in Slovenia. It was considered one of the top 3 sports, after football and basketball. Then, in the late 2010s, handball took the spot, and later on, volleyball also became very popular. Now the most recent one is cycling.
Nowadays, you can barely see any ice hockey on TV. So sadly, its getting less and less popular here.
I enjoyed watching hockey in the 90s up till the 2010s, it was quite popular in Slovenia. It was considered one of the top 3 sports, after football and basketball. Then, in the late 2010s, handball took the spot, and later on, volleyball also became very popular. Now the most recent one is cycling.
Nowadays, you can barely see any ice hockey on TV. So sadly, its getting less and less popular here.
Not very popular.. But we do host the WC right now…
Field Hockey? Very popular.
Ice Skating? Even more popular!
Ice Hockey? Nope
That being said, my neighbour across the street was a professional player oddly enough.