The IIHF Blames Hockey Canada And Ticket Prices For Poor World Junior Hockey Attendance
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S. HarperAugust 23, 2022 (6:10 PM)
The 2022 World Junior Hockey Championships concluded this weekend with Team Canada winning the gold medal over Team Finland 3-2 in overtime.
However, the tournament would draw record low numbers for a World Junior Hockey Championship in Canada but has people pointing fingers.
The World Juniors is usually a annual tournament during the Christmas holidays, but after a Covid outbreak would cause the IIHF to cancel the reminder of the tournament, to later reschedule it in August.
While the gold medal game was close to a sell out the average attendance at the tournament was just 1,525 fans per game. This had caused the international Ice Hockey Federation to blame Hockey Canada and the recent scandals aswell as the ticket prices that were charged for the poor attendance.
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But Hockey Canada all though didn't fully agree believing that the fact the tournament was played in the summer instead of winter aswell as rising gas prices had a huge part to play in the attendance also.
Tickets prices are set by the host country and the cost for a seat at the August version of the tournament remained steep, starting at more than $100 for many games.
Seats in the lower level ranged from $160 to $476 for Saturday's final, with a tickets in the highest reaches of the arena available for $60.
"The IIHF does not set the prices," tournament chair Henrik Bach Nielsen said. "I do not know if the prices were set as normal world juniors and there was no reaction to this. Personally, coming from Denmark, $50, $60, $100 for one of these games? Yeah, that's a high price."
- Luc Tardif IIHF President
- Luc Tardif IIHF President
"We should not make any resolutions out of this year," he said when asked what lessons the IIHF could take from this year's event.
"This is one-time, here in Edmonton with this situation in August. So I don't think we have any plans to change the world juniors. We just need to come back to normal."
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